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GIRLS OF THE MORNING-GLORY 
CAMP FIRE 


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■^GIRLS OF 

THE MORNING-GLORY 
CAMP FIRE 


BY 

ISABEL HORNIBROOK 
v\ 

AUTHOR OF “CAMP AND TRAIL,” “FROM KEEL TO KITE,” ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN GOSS i/' 



BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 



Published April, 1916 



Copyright, 1916, y/ 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 


All Rights Reserved 


Girls of the Morning-Glory Camp Fire 


A 




4 




NORWOOD PRESS 

BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
Norwood, Mass. 

U. S. A. 

APR 28 1916 

©CU42875l'l^. 


Dedicated to 

Ruth, Eleanor, and Margaret 


I M' 1 



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The great burnished top was set to spinning madly upon a 

ELAT STONE. — Pciffe 192 . 


The author expresses her indebtedness to 
Dr. Frank G. Speck of the University of Penn- 
sylvania and to Dr. Jacob D. Sapir for permis- 
sion to reprint the nonsense-syllables and music 
of the Leaf Dance, from their records made 
among the Indians, published in ** Ceremonial 
Songs of the Creek and Yuchi Indians.” 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. 

A Strolling Piano 


PAGE 

I 

II. 

Playground Peacemakers 


19 

III. 

Captain Andy Takes Off His Hat 

39 

IV. 

The Lakeside Council Fire . 


58 

V. 

A Miniature .... 


81 

VI. 

The Green Cross . 


108 

VII. 

Mary- Jane Peg 


123 

VIII. 

The Sugarloaf 


143 

IX. 

Wood Gatherers Among the 
Dunes .... 


160 

X. 

The Astronomer . 


175 

XI. 

KullIbigan .... 


190 

XII. 

Floured Glass 


207 

XIII. 

Wind Against Tide 


226 

XIV. 

The Castaway 


240 

XV. 

In the Quicksands’ Grip 


251 

XVI. 

The Sun-Dollar . 


268 

XVII. 

A Monogram on a Coin 


284 

XVIII. 

The Torch Bearer 


306 


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ILLUSTRATIONS 


The great burnished top was set to spinning madly 

upon a flat stone. (Page 192) . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Her left hand had snatched at the dragging reins . 16 

“ She won’t fail. She can’t ! I see the red ! ” . 66 

An’ you’ll laugh back at the fears, once you join 
the Morning-Glory Camp Fire ” . . .140 

On, ploughing on, through the wet, oozing sands . 246 

A large, antique silver coin of a size and stamp 
such as neither Boy Scout nor Camp Fire Girl 
had ever seen before 268 



GIRLS OF THE MORNING- 
GLORY CAMP FIRE 


CHAPTER I 
A STROLLING PIANO 

** X "X T ^ Y did she choose ‘ Morning-Glory * 
X/\/ as her tribe name ? ” asked Mun- 
* ^ kwon the Rainbow of Sesooa the 
Flame, as Rainbow and Flame, with girlish 
arms entwining, stood beneath the shelter of the 
Silver Twins, two kingly birch-trees, so iden- 
tical in stature even to their topmost jeweled 
crowns of leaves flashing in the July sun, so 
alike in the silver symmetry of each fair limb as 
to be named the Twins. 

These silver kings were one-hearted, too, in 
their benevolent purpose in life, which was to 
unite in casting a brotherly shade over a certain 
corner of the broad city playground, dotted 
with children from every clime, and incidentally 
to fan the flushed cheeks of the two girls di- 
rectly beneath them, bound together by a gir- 


I 


2 


GIRLS OF THE 


dling rainbow that played about their waists, 
woven by the sun’s shuttle amid the quivering 
birch-leaves, fit symbol of their binding Camp 
Fire sisterhood. 

Sesooa’s eyes danced, lit by a tiny golden 
flame that uncurled itself in their demure hazel 
like a firefly alighting on a brown leaf. She 
caught her lower lip between the pretty incisors 
that decorated the front of her mouth as she 
scrutinized the semi-distant figure of a sixteen- 
year-old girl — perhaps nearer to seventeen — 
clad in a loose lavender smock to her knees, 
whence to her ankles there was a gleam of 
white skirt, with the most bewitching, frilled 
summer “Tam” of lavender, matching her 
smock, shielding her brown head, sheltering 
her face, like the hood of a flower. This floral 
figure leaned against the open door of a hand- 
some automobile which was standing upon the 
playground avenue. 

“ I’m sure it’s beyond me to tell why Jessica 
Holley (Jessica Dee Holley ; she always likes to 
bring the unusual little middle name in, because 
it was her mother’s, I suppose), why she chose 
Welatdwesity which is the only Indian equiva- 
lent she could find for Morning-Glory — literally 
meaning ‘ Climbing Plant ’ or ' Pretty Flower ’ 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 


3 


for her Camp Fire name. But I believe there’s 
a story attached to the choice, some * cunning ’ 
little anecdote of her childhood. Wish I could 
ferret it out 1 She seems, always, to have been 
called ‘ Glory,’ nearly as much as Jessica,” an- 
swered Sesooa racily, she who in every-day 
life bore no flaming cognomen, but was plain 
little, gay little, Sally Davenport, as full of quips 
and quirks, of lightning impulses and sudden 
turns as the wheeling firefly in her eyes. 

** Goody ! I’d like to hear the anecdote, too. 
The Morning-Glory name suits her so well that 
I thought she must have dreamed it — that it 
came to her in sleep — as I dreamed mine,” 
laughed the Rainbow, whose rightful name 
w^hen she was not clad in a leather-fringed robe 
of khaki, in moccasins and head-band, and 
seated by a Council Fire, was Arline Champion. 
“ But I call it absurd, meanly absurd, that 
if there’s any story about her and her name, 
we should not hear it, we who have named our 
Camp Fire (and it’s the best in the city, too, 
though I say it myself !), our whole group or 
tribe of fourteen girls, after her,” she went on 
with a stamp of her foot on the playground sod 
and with rainbowed emphasis ; she was the 
shell-tinted, demurely shining kind of fifteen- 


4 


GIRLS OF THE 


year-old girl who unconsciously aims at carry- 
ing a rainbow in her pocket, to brighten the 
dull or tear-wet day. 

“ Oh ! we didn’t exactly ‘name it after her,’ ” 
demurred Sally. “ She happened to come here 
last winter to visit those rich girls, the Deerings, 
who are all fluff an’ stuff ; that exactly describes 

them, Olive and Sybil ” There was the least 

little green tinge of the spitfire about Sesooa’s 
flame now as she shot a glance toward two 
girls seated in the waiting automobile together 
with an older woman, evidently chaperon to 
the band of girls. “ Oh I I say, pinch me ; I 
shouldn’t have said that, should I, seeing that 
they brought us here in their car ? But ’twas 
the first time they ever did it, though my 
father is head-bookkeeper in their father’s office 
at the Works ; and I’ll engage ’twas Morning- 
Glory — Jessica — who suggested it, as we all 
wanted to visit this playground where there 
are so many foreign children, to see them dance 
their folk dances,” she ran on, speech flitting 
away from its starting-point in the wake of her 
firefly dance, which vivaciously hovered from 
one object or group of objects to another. 

Arline waited for it to alight again on Jessica, 
as it presently did. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 5 

“ Well ! as I was saying,” reverted Sally, 
“ you remember how she came here last Febru- 
ary just when we were beginning to organize 
our Camp Fire group, when we had secured 
Miss Darina Dewey as Guardian (I think she’s 
a love of a Guardian and I like her unusual 
first name, too, though some of the girls don’t !) 
but before we had applied for our Charter, 
when we were searching for a name for our new 
Camp Fire circle, raking over Indian names 
like leaves until — goodness! we seemed half- 
smothered in them.” Sally paused for breath, 
breathlessly smothered, indeed, by the sunlit 
torrent of her own words, which had a trick of 
inundating a listener. 

“ It was at our second meeting, I think, at 
Miss Dewey’s house,” she went on, “ that Jessica 
came in, all snow an’ sparkle from her eyes to 
her toes, and introduced herself by showing a 
transfer card signed by the Guardian of a 
Camp Fire circle in a small town in Pennsylva- 
nia to which she had belonged, the Akiyuhapi 
Camp Fire.” 

“ The Are-you-happy Camp Fire 1 Sounds 
just like that 1 ” put in Arline, rainbowed with 
mirthful memory. “ Jessica told us that she had 
already been initiated as a Wood Gatherer and 


6 


GIRLS OF THE 


showed her silver fagot ring. But we w^re a 
little flabbergasted, weren’t we, when she 
sprang her Indian name on us, by which she 
had chosen to be known among Camp Fire 
circles : Welatawesit ; it sounded musical as 
she pronounced it, but it seemed a mouthful ! 
She partly explained it (d’you remember ?) by 
saying that when she was choosing her sym- 
bolic name — as all Camp Fire Girls do — she 
wanted, for a special reason which she kept to 
herself, to take that of a flower, Morning-Glory. 
And that Penobscot Indian word was the near- 
est she could get to it, the morning-glory not 
being originally a native plant.” 

“Yes, and it was at that very meeting, after 
we had welcomed Jessica with open arms as a 
Camp Fire Sister ” — thus Sally again took up 
the fascinating thread of reminiscence — “ that 
when each girl had told her symbolic name, 
Indian or otherwise, and how she came to 
choose it to express some special wish or aim, 
that we fell back upon digging for one for the 
new Camp Fire itself, the new circle or tribe. 
And then, don’t you remember ” — Sesooa’s 
voice rose to a pitch of excitement — “ how 
Betty Ayres, little fair-haired Betty, who’s so 
enthusiastic and about as big as a minute 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 7 

— she’s just four feet, five inches and a 
half ” 

My ! but your minutes do stretch — like 
elastic,” put in Arline, with a rallying elbow 
poke. 

‘‘ Humph I Piffle I Betty jumped up suddenly 
as if she saw a vision, with an idea swelling up 
so big in her that she seemed to grow two 
inches on the strength of it. "Girls / ’ she cried, 
‘ I’m just tired of browsing among Indian dic- 
tionaries, searching for a novel name for our 
new Camp Fire circle. Why don’t we call it, 
right away, the Morning-Glory Camp Fire? 
There’s a name that will reflect glory on us I ’ 
said little Betty, half sobbing and half shining. 
‘ It suggests so much — so much that I can’t just 
put into words of ’ ” 

“ ‘ Of the Morning of Life, the Glory of Girl- 
hood — and vice versa — isn’t that what you 
mean, Betty dear ? ’ said our Guardian, helping 
her out ! ” This reminiscent contribution came 
from Arline. “ And then Miss Dewey went on 
to say how she thought herself that it would be 
a glorious name for us who are Daughters of 
the Sun, so to speak, having the Sun as our 
general symbol. So the Morning-Glory Camp 
Fire we are ! And when we camp out this sum- 


8 


GIRLS OF THE 


mer upon the Sugarloaf Peninsula where the 
sand-dunes are white as snow, we’re going to 
call our great, ramshackle wooden shanty, with 
one side quite open to the airs of heaven, Camp 
Morning-Glory. So much glory that we shan’t 
know ourselves, eh ? But all this ” — slowly — 
“ doesn’t bring us one little bit nearer to answer- 
ing the question which I asked you at first, why 
our Glory-girl, Jessica, chose her symbolic name 
at the beginning. Since it put so much into 
our heads we’ve got a right to know all about 
it I ” with another laughing stamp upon the 
playground grass. “ I can’t bear mystery ; if 
there’s a secret as big as my thumb, even if it’s 
about nothing or next to nothing, I want to 
know it.” 

Oh, mystery — I love mystery ! Bubbling 
mystery ! ” Sesooa rose on tiptoe under the 
Silver Twins, looking rather like a Baltimore 
oriole, that vivid flame-bird, for she, too, wore 
the latest thing in girlish smock frocks of a 
dainty peach-color very closely related to 
orange, shirred or smocked with black by her 
own clever little fingers that had fashioned the 
garment, too, the which had won her a green 
honor-bead to string upon the Camp Fire Girl’s 
necklace that she wore on ceremonial occasions. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 


9 


Those fingers had draped the little orange 
Tam O’Shanter, as well, which covered her crisp, 
dark hair, a masterpiece of head-gear more 
jaunty, less hood-like than that of the flower- 
like figure leaning against the auto’s side to 
which the wheeling firefly of her glance now 
turned. 

“ Oh, bubbles ! I’m going right over now to 
ask her why she chose her Morning-Glory 
name and symbol,” she went on, each word a 
tinted bubble of laughing curiosity painting 
itself upon the sunshine. “ Absurd, but I am I 
If there’s any foolish little child-story woven in 
with the choice, this is the very time and place 
to hear it, here on the public playground, with 
all those children — such funny, foreign-looking 
tots most of them ! — dancing ‘ Pop Goes the 
Weasel I ’ Pouf ! I feel like dancing with 
them.” 

And the human oriole flitting forth from the 
friendly shade of the Twins fluttered her shirred 
plumage in a gleeful pas seul upon the play- 
ground grass, where the sun-glare transformed 
her into an orange flame, while her ears, at- 
tuned to all merry sounds, drank in the shrill 
music of five-and-thirty children’s voices (the 
number ought to have been even, but in that 


lO 


GIRLS OF THE 


gleeful chorus there was one silent throat), six 
dancing sets, shouting with a strange babel of 
foreign accents, to the accompaniment of their 
stamping feet, the old nonsense-rhyme of the 
sixteenth century : 

Half a pound of twopenny rice, 

Half a pound of treacle, 

Stir it up and make it nice 
Pop goes the weasel ! ” 


r#,bu 1 




p — 



hummed Sally, in flaming echo, and stood 
still. 

All the while, that versatile quirk in her 
nature, corresponding to the flitting firefly 
in her eyes, which rendered her attention 
easily diverted when she wasn’t gravely in 
earnest, changed her all at once from an 
eager bubble of curiosity, that must burst 
if it did not penetrate a trifling secret, into 
an absorbed spectator. She hung upon the 
fringe of the playground dances, intent upon 
every rhythmic movement as the leading 
couple in each juvenile set (it happened to 
be a little earringed, lustrous- eyed Syrian girl 
footing it with a small Turk for a partner 
in that nearest) formed an arch with their 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE ii 


uplifted arms for a gay little dancer to pass 
beneath. 

“ Oh-h ! don’t they catch on well and dance 
prettily, these playground children?” mur- 
mured Sesooa softly to the quivering interest 
in her own heart. “I’m awfully glad that 
Jessica proposed our visiting this playground 
to-day where there are so many little foreigners 
not born in this country or whose parents haven’t 
been long here. She ” — dreamily soliloquizing, 
with a glance at that lavender-smocked figure 
— “ said that, last year, she and the other mem- 
bers of the Akiyuhapi Camp Fire in that Penn- 
sylvanian milling town, where she became a 
Camp Fire Girl, did so much voluntary work 
upon the public playground, largely among 
the little immigrants, teaching them American 
songs, American games, telling them stories, 
settling their squabbles. Well ! I guess I’m 
not going to bother her with questions about 
her ‘Morning-Glory’ name just now. Over 
there where she's standing ” — flashing another 
glance at the gray auto, with two girls in it 
and one leaning against its silver door-knob — 
“I’d have to bray like a jackass to be heard 
above the music of that absurd piano, perched 
upon a low cart. Goody ! ” with a sudden, ex^ 


12 


GIRLS OF THE 


cited movement of her vivid shoulders. 
shouldn’t like to be that perched-up pianist. 
Just suppose the playground horse should take 
it into his head to pop — to dance — to chase the 
weasel^ toof'^ 

Was it any suddenly restless movement on 
the part of that four-footed servant of the city 
which drew the strolling piano upon a low cart 
from playground to playground to thresh out 
music for the children’s dances — was it that 
which flashed the thought backward over his 
flicking tail, over the head of the pounding 
pianist seated upon a light cane chair before 
the lashed piano, flashed it into Sally’s brain ? 
That, or the elfin dance of sunbeams upon his 
stamping hoofs which, together with the pop- 
ping dance-cries of the children and the louder 
popping of the musical instrument behind him — 
deliriously out of tune, too — must surely infect 
the staidest horse? 

Sally did not know which launched the ap- 
prehension, the tickling sunbeams or the restless 
hoofs and head. But she was used to horses. 
She found herself mechanically straightening 
up, controlling the giddy dance-spirit in her 
own soles, moving nearer — nearer — to the low 
cart as if she could not help it. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 13 

A brilliant orange streak in the sunlight she, 
flecked oriole-like with black, from the velvet 
ribbon that lent tone to that saucy little Tam, 
to the black needlework stars upon the heaving 
girlish breast. 

Then all at once this human flame-bird weav- 
ing its way in and out between sets of dancing 
children was halted by a musical crash, brought 
up short on tiptoe by a screaming commotion 
through which rang a nightmare of treble 
chords wildly sustained by the pianist’s right 
hand blundering among the shrieking keys of 
the elevated piano, while her left arm waved 
on high, imploring help, the whole seeming a 
premature, mad finale to the popping music, to 
which every voice upon the playground, ani- 
mate and inanimate, lent a cry — discordantly at 
that ! 

The effect was so feverishly funny that Sally, 
who had the oriole’s gay spirit within her 
orange-smocked breast, vented a shriek as loud 
as any, to swell the confusion, automatically 
clapping her fingers to her ears. 

The voices of some fourscore children had 
popped explosively from song and shout to 
scare-note and shriek, a conglomerate shriek, 
strengthened by every foreign accent under 


H 


GIRLS OF THE 


the sun (any cry ever hurled from the crumbling 
Tower of Babel was nothing to it !), a shriek 
that hung, sustained, in air together with the 
rasping, squelching notes of that unfinished 
musical measure which seemed to tatter the air 
itself. 

‘‘ Ouch ! My s-soul ! ** murmured Sally under 
her breath. ** The horse ! It’s the — horse. He 
is bolting, with the piano lashed to the cart be- 
hind him. And the — poor — pianist ! ” 

It needed no more. She saw the girl-musi- 
cian’s left arm waving, imploring, saw her rock 
upon the light cane chair before the instrument 
that was not lashed to the rocking cart ; she 
heard the horse’s mutinous snort, heard it 
strangely echoed in dumb fashion by a pair of 
parted childish lips near her ; crowning all, she 
caught the terrified shriek of a small boy who 
clutched at his raven-black hair and what 
English he could muster as he started toward 
a sand-pile ahead, yelling, “ Mine babee — mine 
babee I Horse he go kill her ; she — she go all 
— deaded ! ” 

And like the flame from the cloud leaped 
the answering fire in Sesooa — little Camp Fire 
Girl! 

“The driver — the boy driver — he ought to 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 15 

be shot ; he’s umpiring a baseball game,” was 
the first distinct thought that leaped to her 
mind as, like an oriole on the wing, she sped 
across the sunlit grass in the wake of the still 
rocking cart, the fiendishly howling piano, the 
screaming, swaying pianist. The second light- 
ning conviction was : “ It’s up-hill and the 

horse can’t really run very fast with that absurd 
piano behind him I He’s dancing all over 
the place, rather than wildly running, now I 
. . . Rolie showed me — has told me so often 

— how to stop a runaway I ” 

Rolie was her Boy Scout brother and that 
gallant fourteen-year-old Scout seemed to 
run neck and neck with her in this crisis, 
whispering heart into her, advising her move- 
ments. 

The firefly in her eyes, soaring, golden, 
above consternation, has lit now upon the 
horse’s quivering haunch — on his black mane. 

“ After all, he’s only a horse ; I’ve not alone 
ridden one, but, as a Camp Fire Girl, have sad- 
dled and bridled and fed an’ curry combed it, 
too, every day for the past month I ” whizzed 
thought, darting ahead of her as with another 
springy step or two her right hand has seized 
the cart’s shaft to hold on and prevent herself 


i6 GIRLS OF THE 

from falling in the supreme effort she is about 
to make. 

Her left hand, attached to a strong little wrist 
for a girl not yet sixteen, has snatched at the 
dragging reins, holding them short, is trying to 
pull the horse’s head down, turn it toward her ! 

Only a horse ! And a brother-horse was 
such a friend of hers ! The firefly bore that 
thought upon its wings as it wheeled above 
doubt, resistance, wrenching strain that was 
tugging her soft young arms from their sockets 
— her feet from the solid earth. 

Only a horse ! But a maddened horse, 
distracted by the shrieking ivories behind 
him I 

Her girl’s strength against his ! 

Yet his rebel-crest was lowering. His lifted 
forelegs were uncurling, the waving hoofs that 
cared not what they smashed returning sanely 
to the sod. 

And over the tumult of his heated horse-play, 
the inflaming echo of the music playing upon 
his generally patient nerves, rose the voice of 
the Camp Fire Girl as one who understands, 
gentling, soothing : 

“ Whoa I Whoa-a ! old horse. There ! there 1 
good boy. Qui-quiet — now 1 The-ere ! ” 



Her left hand has snatched at the dragging KKJSH .— Page 16 , 





MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 17 

A snort that shook the earth under her feet, 
a jolt and rattle of the low cart and lashed 
piano, straining at its moorings to the cart, 
an hysterical sob from the pianist, and a girl 
life-saver stood outlined for one flaming minute 
at the horse’s head, queen of the equine dance, 
mistress of him and the situation, her hand to 
her side, her breath coming in great, ragged 
gasps that claimed to be sobs, too, sobs of won- 
der at how she ever did it I 

“ Well done, little girl ! Good work ! Well 
done, little Oriole in the orange smock I ” came 
from spectators known and unknown. “ How 
on earth did you have the presence of mind to 
do it — to stop him so quickly ? ” 

“ I’m a Camp Fire Girl. I ought to have 
my wits about me I ” 

Sesooa threw back her head and let them see 
the flame in her eyes, the flame kindled at that 
new-born Fire whose divine essence is to “ Give 
Service I ” 

Suddenly that flame cowered and ran to hide 
in the tremble that swept over her from head 
to foot, a sick shudder that carried with it, also, 
the heroine’s grateful ecstasy as she looked 
ahead, only six short feet, at a raven-haired 
small boy flinging himself with a jumble of for- 


i8 THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 


eign cries and broken English at a playground 
sand-box, where, amid other tiny tots, a black- 
haired baby of eighteen months crawled safely, 
like an insect, at the heart of the silvery pile. 


CHAPTER II 


PLAYGROUND PEACEMAKERS 

T he pianist had been helped from her 
cane perch by a grown-up girl, a 
young school-teacher who led the 
playground dances and who had run a close 
race with Sesooa to the rescue ; although, as 
she frankly blurted out now, it was doubtful 
whether she would have had the courage and 
skill to stop the runaway in good form, as 
cleverly as the Camp Fire Girl had done. 

It all hinged upon this, as Sally knew, that 
a black-maned, fifteen or sixteen hands high 
equine dancer, with a howling piano behind 
him, presents an infinitely more paralyzing spec- 
tacle to the maid, young or old, who has never 
come to close quarters with a horse in his stable 
than it would to one who had bridled and un- 
bridled, harnessed and unharnessed him, fed, 
cared for and petted him intimately — even 
though the incentive to such laborious care 
might be partly a decorative one, the reward 
19 


20 


GIRLS OF THE 


of another red honor-bead to string upon her 
Camp Fire Girl’s necklace. 

There was one thing to which the orange- 
smocked maid had not become accustomed, 
however ; that was to sterilizing the flame of her 
little tongue, lest it should materially hurt any- 
body, when hot fire was kindled within her 
from good cause. 

** You ought to be shot,*’ she told the school- 
boy driver who had deserted temporarily from 
the horse’s head ; “ you ought — ought to be 
shut up in jail for a month I What sort of stuff 
have you got in you ” — breathlessly — “ skedad- 
dling off to a ball game, instead of looking after 
the cart and piano? Suppose he had killed 
her?” pointing to the shaken pianist who had 
sunk upon a bench beneath a beautiful, circular 
catalpa tree just bursting into flower. 

“ Oh, Kafoozalem I I didn’t think that old 
fire-horse would run even if there was a charg- 
ing battery behind him ; he’s as old as Methu- 
saleh,” muttered the boy rather sulkily. 

‘‘ What ! did he once belong to the fire de- 
partment?” Sesooa was stroking the black 
mane very gently just now. 

“ Yes, the city sold him to a livery stable 
when he got too old to hit the pace with the 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 21 


other horses when a fire alarm was turned in 
an’ when he was too worn-out to look spry in a 
hack, the liveryman bargained him back on to 
the city ; now he’s playing the fool carting 
round a piano for * Pop Goes the Weasel ! ’” 
The youthful driver snorted between laughter 
and commiseration. 

‘‘ Oh ! the poor old fellow ; perhaps he mis- 
took the singing of the children — it was shrill 
enough to beat the band — and the popping 
music behind him for some new-fangled kind of 
alarm invented since his day ; so he just bolted 
— and danced when he found he couldn’t make 
it — couldn’t climb the hill dragging the cart 
and piano, with the pianist playing still ! There 
now ! you old hero of a worn-out fire-horse, 
aren’t you glad you didn’t end your days in dis- 
grace by killing somebody ? ” cooed the Camp 
Fire Girl to the aged rebel whose black nose 
was now nuzzling her waist in friendly fashion. 

‘‘Yes, I ought to have stopped playing di- 
rectly he began to dance,” confessed the girl- 
musician, “ but I simply lost presence of mind. 
It got on my nerves this morning driving round 
these poor parts of the city, perched up in front 
of the cart beside the driver, like an organ* 
grinder’s wife.” 


22 


GIRLS OF THE 


‘‘Well, you won^t have to do it after this 
week probably,” comforted the other school- 
teacher who led the dances ; “ the supervisor of 
playgrounds says that he’s going to station a 
graphophone on every playground where there 
isn’t a piano in a schoolhouse close by. You see 
the playground system is only newly established 
here in Clevedon and they haven’t got it run- 
ning very well yet. Hello I Jacob, so your 
‘ babee ’ didn’t get hurt, eh ; you’ll have to 
thank this lady for stopping the horse before he 
trampled the sand-pile where the tiny children 
were.” So she addressed the raven-haired 
small boy in a dingy little hanging blouse of 
red velvet, whose foreign cries had topped the 
tumult. 

“ How old are you, Jacob ? ” questioned the 
heroine of the moment, sparing the child and 
his broken English an attempt at compliance. 

Jacob Kominski, Polish Jew, struck a dra- 
matic attitude and blinked at her solemnly. 

“ ‘ Old ’ 1 ” he echoed. “ Yes’day I be s-six ; 
next day to-mow-wow I be seven,” specula- 
tively leaning his head to one side ; “ som’ day 
to-day I’s five — I is all de olds in de world I ” 
passionately. 

“ Somehow he looks it, doesn’t he ? ” broke 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 23 

in another girlish voice with a laugh in it and a 
tender note, too, tender as the dawn, a very 
morning-glory note, that came well from under 
the lavender Tam O’Shanter, as the girl in the 
silken smock frock, the subject of conversation 
earlier, linked her arm through Sally’s. “ Come 
here, Jacob ! Aren’t they ‘ cunning,’ these 
playground children ? We used to have such 
lots of fun with them last year — not here, of 
course I Oh, Sally, you’re the — bravest — 
thing ! ” 

*‘Am I?” breathed Sally, nestling close to 
the lavender smock ; the Glory-girl, as her 
Camp Fire Sisters had a trick of calling Jessica, 
was not only the oldest member of their organ- 
ized circle, not only wore upon the little finger 
of her left hand the silver fagot ring, symbol 
of membership — as Sally did upon hers which 
had caught the horse’s reins — but she was on 
the verge of attaining higher rank in her so- 
ciety, of becoming a “ Fire Maker ” ; in a word, 
she was regarded as the flower, not in name 
alone, of the Morning-Glory Camp Fire, the 
tribe that was her namesake, in a way. 

Oh ! yes, indeed, you were very brave. 
However did you screw up courage to do it, 
to run beside the cart and catch the horse’s 


24 


GIRLS OF THE 


head ? Pd have been afraid of being knocked 
down — trampled I ** 

“ So would I ! And II Or of having the 
cart go over me I ” Such was the duet of ap- 
plause which followed on the heels of Jessica’s 
praise from still two other pairs of girlish lips ; 
namely from the two girls in white who had 
been seated in the automobile against whom the 
little spitfire flame of Sally’s tongue had been 
launched, a little while ago, when she scathingly 
pronounced them “all fluff and stuff I” 

The nobler flame which had burned in her 
during her late heroic act had altogether con- 
sumed petty jealousies and criticisms for the 
time being ; she took their congratulations well 
and gratefully, while Arline, her dearest chum 
and Camp Fire Sister with whom she had ex- 
changed memories under the Twins, fondled 
her upon the side that was not in possession of 
Jessica. 

“ The pianist is braver than I was, for, see 
there ! she’s going to mount the cart and play 
again,” suggested Sesooa presently, growing a 
little tired of being “ fussed over.” “ She ts 
gritty, if you like it I ” 

“ So she is I ” acquiesced the older of the two 
Deering girls who owned the luxurious motor- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 25 

car in waiting upon the playground avenue ; 
her name was Olive ; to the unprejudiced eye 
she did not seem to be composed of super-light 
and “ fluffy ” stuff ; at sixteen and a half, nearly 
the same age as Jessica, she was already a 
beauty, from the glossy, ringlet curl — as black 
as Jacob Kominski’s locks, but so silkily fine 
that it did not seem to belong to the same 
category of human hair — tucked behind her 
small ear, to the toe of her seven-dollar shoe. 
“ And it must be so perfectly horrid driving 
round in front of that piano and cart I added 
Olive of the blue-black curl, throwing a glance 
at the mounting pianist from her dark, girlishly 
dreamy. Southern eyes. 

“You may be sure she doesn^t play organ- 
grinder for fun I ” laughed Arline. “ She’s a 
young school-teacher who has to support her 
mother, so the playground teacher who leads 
the dances says, and she adds to her salary by 
playing for the children’s singing games and 
folk-dances during the playground season. 
Now ! if only one girl who’s a member of our 
Camp Fire were here — Ruth Marley, who aims 
at a musical career and plays for our Camp 
Fire songs and dances, how nicely she could 
help her out by mounting the cart and pound 


26 


GIRLS OF THE 


ing” away at ‘ Pop Goes the Weasel’ (I wonder 
if they’re going to begin that again?) instead 
of her.” 

“ Tooraloo ! Somebody seems to be begin- 
ning something — stirring up a new fuss — over 
there!” suddenly suggested Sally, who was 
preening her orange and black plumage, anx- 
iously smoothing it to make sure there was 
no mark where the penitent old fire-horse had 
caressed her. “ Goody I what’s up now : a 
battle, an earthquake — or merely somebody 
drowning in that two-foot-and-a-half-deep bath- 
ing pool — or some other playground trifle? ” 

It’s a — a fight, I think 1 ” quavered a new 
voice whose staid quality dripped sedately upon 
the laughing girlish sarcasm. 

“ A fight I A fight between two boys — two 
small boys ! Where is it ? Over there — d’you 
see — at the foot of the giant stride — beyond 
those seesawing teeter-ladders I ” All the five 
maidens in summer Tams and Panamas were 
breathlessly exclaiming together, now, direct- 
ing their gaze across half-an-acre of playground 
at a piece of athletic apparatus glittering rather 
like a tall steel gibbet against the blue and 
white sky, up whose skeleton ladders juvenile 
athletes were one by one climbing to try their 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 27 


prowess at sliding or jumping down ; at the 
foot of this ‘‘ giant stride ” a ring of boys, with 
even one or two men among them, had sprung 
up as mysteriously as the growth of corn on a 
hot night. 

“Yes, Fm sure it’s a fight between some of 
the playground children,” said the sedate voice 
again, coming from the middle-aged woman 
who had sat in the automobile with the two 
Deering girls before the escapade of the horse, 
whom Olive and Sybil — yes, and Jessica Holley, 
too — called Cousin Anne. 

“ A quarrel between two little boys who are 
pommeling each other black and blue, I sup- 
pose,” she went on with tremulous anxiety. 
“ Where — where’s the playground teacher ? ” 

“ The one who leads the dances is comforting 
the shaken pianist before she begins to play 
again — telling the driver to move the cart and 
piano to a shady spot. Her back’s turned,” 
gasped Arline. 

“Never mind I If it’s a fight between two 
little boys, I guess I can stop it — these foreign 
children, some of them, are dreadful for quarrel- 
ing — I’ve settled playground fights before,” 
broke in a sudden, quivering cry from Morn- 
ing-Glory, whose Indian name was Welatawesit. 


28 


GIRLS OF THE 


‘‘ Now, maybe, she^l be pommeled herself ; 
they may rain blows on her if she gets between 
them ! ” wailed Olive in a tone which showed 
her fondness for Jessica. 

‘‘Yes, and it seems so — so low-down to mix 
all up in a squealing fight between two dirty 
little foreigners!” Sybil Deering, two years 
younger than her sister, and rather fluffy in 
appearance from her present, superficial pout 
to her loose, light hair and diaphanous frills, 
wrinkled up a pert little nose that was inclined 
to point toward Heaven. 

“ Well 1 what would you have her do ? ” 
challenged Sesooa rather savagely ; “ let them 
fight on, until their eyes are all ‘bunged up* 
and you could hardly tell their faces from a 
rubber ball, smeared with red paint, eh ? 
There’s no fear of her Sally nodded toward 
the back of the lavender, flower-like figure mak- 
ing toward that mushroom ring of human ap- 
plaudists which a fight, or the rumor of a fight, 
can collect quicker than anything else on this 
mortal earth. “You needn’t worry about her; 
she has received an honor for patriotism — a red, 
white, and blue honor-bead — for work she did 
on a public playground last year. I’m off to 
back her up 1 ” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 29 

And Sesooa, again the orange-smocked 
flame, started in the wake of the lavender 
patriot, Arline, too, asking questions as they 
sped over the grass of a seven-year-old Amer- 
ican boy who was not quite so keen about the 
pugilistic display as his companions. 

“ It’s Polie an’ Lithuish,” he not very lucidly 
explained. ** Lithuish he was trying to climb 
the steel ladder of the ‘stride,’ ” pointing toward 
that giant piece of the apparatus of play. 
“ Polie he pulled him down, an’ trod on his toe 
an’ Lithuish went for him. I guess the Polander 
boy, he’s the strongest ; he’s got ‘ Lithie ’ down 
once a’ready ! ” 

He had thrown him again as the girlish 
patriot in the lavender smock saw, when she 
darted through the loose ring of older boys, 
swelled by a bored loafer or two, arrived at 
so-called man’s estate, who were enjoying the 
fight and telling them to “ Go to it I ” 

Pole and Lithuanian, sprigs of neighboring 
foreign races, dwelling next to each other in 
Europe, they were fighting like small wild 
things, tooth and claw I Polie of the flashing 
dark eyes, red lips and round seal-brown head 
had the better of it ; he had flung the taller, fair 
Lithuanian boy into a bed of flowering canna, 


30 


GIRLS OF THE 


where his bleeding nose sowed an extra crop 
of ruddy blossoms. 

“ Oh I stop it ! ” cried the Morning-Glory 
chokingly, laying hold on Polie’s uplifted arm 
— although the spectacle was much more 
savage than she had dreamt of — and hanging 
on bravely, even, while he launched a sturdy 
nine-year-old kick at her white skirt and 
lavender ankle. “ Oh ! you older boys ought 
to be ashamed of yourselves — egging them on I 
Can’t — can’t somebody — stop — it 9^^ for the 
blue-eyed Lithuanian boy was on his feet 
again, gory but unconquered. 

Well I I guess somebody will^ little lady,” 
boomed a great voice behind her. “ I’d have 
bore down upon this ‘ scrap ’ sooner, but for a 
busted spar ! ” 

The Morning-Glory turned and looked up 
into a massive face which — thought being very 
nimble in moments like these — she silently 
likened all in one gasping instant to two words 
from a Camp Fire song : “ Sheltering Flame 1 ” 
It was tanned, weathered, and reddened to the 
florid hue of a red sunset, showing a narrow 
sky-line of blue, radiating protection, that cor- 
responded to an eye-line. 

From that sea-blue eye the girl’s glance in- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 31 

voluntarily darted downward to the ‘‘busted 
spar,” a lame pillar of a right leg whose limp 
was painfully visible even as the newcomer 
took three hasty strides forward and dropped a 
powerful hand upon a shoulder of each of the 
small boys, holding them wide apart in a grip 
that they might as well try to lift a lighthouse 
as to break. 

The stranger caught her glance and smiled. 
“ Oh 1 it’s mended now, that damaged spar,” 
he said, answering her look ; “ and ’tisn’t a 
recent injury, anyway. Here, now I You two 
hop-o’-my-thumb rascals ” — shaking the bel- 
ligerents — “ you ease off there an’ don’t get 
fiery again or, by my word, you’ll both march 
off this playground to the taste o’ the stick — 
sore and strong — see ? ” 

There was nothing for them to do but to 
“ see ” — see reason— held in that mighty grip. 
Under a few scathing words from this peace- 
maker, who was physically, at any rate, a man 
of weight, for he must have tipped the scale at 
over two hundred pounds and was ruggedly 
tall, the ring of applauders melted away into 
the sunshine like an untimely frost. 

“ I wish I could ha’ got my hands on them 
at the same time and given ’em a shaking,” 


32 


GIRLS OF THE 


blurted out the flaming peacemaker. “ Egging 
little chaps like these two on I ” his gaze travel- 
ing back and forth between Poke’s swelling 
black eye and the nose of Lithuish. “ Gosh ! 
they did go at it hard, for young uns. But 
’twas only a little sketch of a fight.” 

“ ‘ Sketch ’ ? I should call it a — a sanguinary 
picture,” gasped the girl with a half-hysterical 
little laugh, pointing to the pug-nose of Lithuish. 

“ Good for you ! ” The stranger dropped a 
smiling look on her from under his bushy, gray 
eyebrows, pleased at her ready wit. “ Well 1 I 
guess you can go back to your own folks now 
with an easy mind,” he suggested. “ I’ll keep 
these butting kids in order,” with a roving 
glance at the waiting automobile and the group 
under the fragrant catalpa tree. 

“ Here’s a playground teacher coming, too,” 
said Morning-Glory, as a brawny young man, 
in a dripping khaki shirt and trousers that 
rained diamonds, approached, hugging a great, 
wet, white ball. ** He’s been away over there 
evidently teaching some of the children to play 
water-polo in that shallow bathing-pool.” 

She pointed to a broad, artificial sheet of 
water fed by city hydrants, with a rainbowed 
fountain in the center. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 33 

“ Gee whiz ! they’d need a score o’ teachers 
here to direct all these children’s play — it’s a 
large an’ crowded playground,” remarked the 
captor of Polie and Lithuish, now interposing 
his massive body between them. ‘‘ An’ great 
kingdom 1 ” — looking around him with a gust 
of laughter — ‘‘ there’s more foreign spice on this 
playground than ever old King Solomon col- 
lected in his ships from the four quarters of the 
earth.” 

“You mean that these little foreigners have 
lots of hot ‘ pep ’ in them, eh ? ” flashed Sally, 
who had just come up, liking to air a little slang. 

“ Sure, that’s what I do mean ! ” The lame 
peacemaker lifted a nautical-looking cap from 
his grizzled hair in fatherly farewell to the girls 
as they moved off. “So long ! ” he said kindly. 
“ Maybe we’ll run across each other again.” 

“ Maybe we will ! ” Morning-Glory, other- 
wise Jessica, threw him a backward smile over 
her lavender shoulder. “ I’m sure he’s a sea- 
captain — or was,” she said, retracing her way 
toward the catalpa tree between Sally and 
Arline. “ I’m interested in sea-captains be- 
cause my great-grandfather was one ; I have a 
little old miniature of him painted on ivory 
which belonged to Mother ; she — she left it to 


34 


GIRLS OF THE 


me/* with a catch of the breath. “ He has 
brown hair an’ bluish eyes the color of mine ; 
somewhere about seventy or eighty years ago 
he commanded a big ship and sailed out of 
Newburyport — the only Newburyport in the 
United States. . . . Oh, if only he could 

be alive now, then Fd really belong to some- 
body, not just be thrust on to people who aren’t 
any relatives at all, no matter how kind they 
are I ” she added under her breath — so low that 
neither Sally nor Arline heard — with a passion- 
ate quiver of the lip and a glance at the Deer- 
ing automobile flashing in gray and silver, 
with a faultless chauffeur on the front seat. 

‘‘ Well ! Fm a Camp Fire Girl, anyway.” 
So she silently caught herself up with a return 
of the morning-glory look, slightly bedewed. 
“And ‘Whoso standeth by that Fire, flame- 
fanned, shall never stand alone ! ’ What I 
that plucky pianist is really beginning on ‘ Pop 
Goes the Weasel’ again,” she exclaimed, as 
renewed strains from the elevated piano floated 
over the playground. 

“ Let us hope the weasel will pop to a finish 
this time ! ” laughed Arline, as they reached 
the catalpa tree and stood once more, grouped 
with Olive, Sybil, and their chaperoning cousin, 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 35 

under its fanning, heart-shaped leaves. ‘‘ Now ! 
I wonder to what nationality that little girl in 
the coarse gray frock belongs?” went on the 
Rainbow, sweeping with her glance the sets of 
skipping children again being marshaled for 
the folk-dance. 

‘‘ Do you mean the one with the big, patient, 
purple eyes — eyes like a wood anemone ? ” asked 
Jessica ; she who had taken for her Camp Fire 
name a climbing flower loved flowers of all 
kinds, especially wild ones. 

“Yes, and with a toe sticking out through 
her old shoe ! And she can^t keep her mouth 
shut, although, apparently, no words come 
from it. I do believe it was her queer croaking 
gasps that I heard with the foreign babel and the 
shrill ‘ Oh’s ’ and ‘ Ah’s ’ of all the other children, 
when I ran to stop the horse ! ” bleated Sally. 

“ I wonder if there’s anything wrong with 
her ; whether she’s — what-d’you-call-it — defect- 
ive in any way ? ” came in languid speculation 
from Olive. 

“ Girls ! ” Cousin Anne sadly settled the 
question. “ I believe she’s deaf and dumb.” 

“ Deaf and dumb I That explains her. Oh, 
poor tot ! ” The Morning-Glory, whose dance- 
loving feet had been keeping time to the 


36 


GIRLS OF THE 


popping music, unrhythmically swung one of 
them off at a sharp angle, as if a rude pebble 
had struck her ankle in its silken stocking, 
hurting it more than Poke’s kick. “ Deaf and 
dumb I Then she can’t hear the music. And 
she’s so awkward, moves so slowly and 
clumsily, that the other children don’t want to 
dance with her ! . . . Oh 1 she almost 

makes one cry.” Jessica brushed the blue- 
gray eyes that, according to her, resembled her 
ancestor’s in the old miniature. “ See her 
standing still in the middle of the fun, plucking 
at the gathers of her gray frock, looking up at 
the other children, trying to find out what 
they’re going to do next ! ” 

“Yes, and one of those other children will 
take her hand as a partner when the teacher 
insists, then drop it directly she looks the 
other way I They don’t want to dance with 
her silent tongue and old, broken shoes,” said 
Olive Deering. 

“ Then Pm going to dance with her, if the 
teacher will let me. We’ll form a set of our own, 
we two, if we can’t fit in anywhere ! You don’t 
mind keeping the auto waiting a little longer, 
do you. Cousin Anne ? ” 

The last words were flashed back over Jes- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 37 

sica's smocked shoulder, with a tremulous tilt 
of her upper lip that hung between a laugh and 
a sob. Already she was mingling with the 
juvenile dancers, a tall purple and white Morn- 
ing-Glory amid that garden of racial buds, of 
little children from every clime. 

The dumb child’s hand was in hers, after a 
few low words to the playground teacher, who 
abstracted one odd child from the nearest set 
and installed the new couple in her place. Jes- 
sica’s foot in its patent-leather pump and lilac 
stocking was thrust forth side by side with the 
rusty, out-at-toe footwear, the Morning-Glory 
swaying upon its inner tendril, the yearning 
tendril of Love, teaching the grey, cramped bud 
beside her to sway and step — to glide and 
pirouette — too. 

The glide was only a clumsy shuffle. But 
there grew a light in the dumb child’s eyes, 
those eyes of purple patience, so that those who 
watched its dawning flicker from under the 
catalpa tree felt their throats tickle. 

It did not go out with the final popping 
of the long-suffering weasel. For, now, the 
pianist, quite herself again, had struck up the 
gay, frolicking music of a Vineyard Dance. 
And side by side those mismatched partners, 


38 THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 

the seventeen-year-old Camp Fire Girl, the 
eight-year-old deaf-mute, were scampering 
through it, enacting all the vineyard drama of 
growth, — Jessica by dumb show instructing, 
after a fashion, the child at her side. 

Hand in hand they knelt on one knee on the 
playground grass, making gay pretense of 
planting grape-seeds in the warm ground. 
Step by step — stamp, stamp, stamp I — they cir- 
cled round, with arms uplifted, with groping 
fingers plucking counterfeit grapes of sunshine 
from imaginary vines, that violet light growing 
in the dumb child’s eyes, while she strove to 
ape each gesture and movement of her com- 
panion, as if — transfigured — she peeped through 
the gates ajar of fairy-land, had her first real 
glimpse of the joy of childhood. 

Suddenly, her feet lagged ; she dragged upon 
Jessica’s hand. She stood still. Her big eyes 
were uplifted to the white cloud-foam drifting 
across the blue sea of the July sky. Then they 
dropped wonderingly to her partner’s face. 

Look ! Look ! Look ! ” cried Arline with 
a frank, glad sob. “ I verily believe she thinks 
Heaven is short an angel to-day, one having 
dropped down from the clouds, especially to 
dance with her 1 ” 


CHAPTER III 


CAPTAIN ANDY TAKES OFF HIS HAT 

** RE AT Neptune I I do declare, she 

■ ^ dances as lightly as a Mother Carey 

chicken balancing upon a wave.’^ 
“You should say, rather, that she dances 
like a morning-glory in the breeze ! ” Sesooa 
looked laughingly up into the face of the mass- 
ive peacemaker who had separated the two 
little fighting foreigners ; he had delivered 
them over to the tender mercies of the play- 
ground teacher who carried the dripping white 
water-ball in his arms, while he, the lame 
stranger whom Jessica opined was a sea-cap- 
tain, withdrew to a better position for watching 
the dancing which brought him near to the 
group under the circular catalpa tree. 

“ An^ why should I say she dances like a 
* morning-glory,^ may I ask ? I don’t know 
much about flowers, but I know a whole lot 
about foam-chickens, Carey chickens — stormy 
petrels you’d call ’em, most likely : and they’re 
the lightest, most buoyant things on God’s 
39 


40 


GIRLS OF THE 


earth I You should see them^^ went on the 
stranger expressively, “ with their small wings 
spread, balancing on a wave-crest, little feet 
digging down into the foam, never sinking, dis- 
appearing into a watery hollow one minute, up 
again the next, crowing on the top of another 
foam-hill ! I say she dances like thaty the girl 
who’s footing it with the little creature in the 
broken old shoes and grey frock — as if the wave 
could never catch her ! ” There was a little 
genial mist, like light spray from the storm- 
water of which he spoke, in the stranger’s eye 
now, as it followed Jessica and her dumb part- 
ner through the last gay stampede of the vine- 
yard dance. ‘‘ And here’s hoping that the 
storm-wave never will swallow her ! ” he added 
with an eye of such merry fatherly kindness 
that Sally, part of whose bringing-up it had 
been not to hold familiar converse with stran- 
gers, absolutely forgot to place him in that 
category and immediately gave her racy little 
tongue all the freedom it desired. 

** That sounds awful-ly nice what you say 
about her,” she remarked. ‘‘ And I’ll tell her 
you said it ; she’ll be pleased to hear it because 
she has made up her mind that you’re a sea- 
captain and her great-grandfather was one. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 41 

owned a big ship and sailed out of Newbury- 
port.” 

Ha I The only Newburyport in the United 
States, with its plaguy sand-bar at the mouth 
of the Merrimac River, so that ships can sail 
out of that port, when they’re in ballast, but 
never put in there, when they’re loaded, after 
a long voyage I ” 

“Ye-es,” murmured Sally, not interested. 
“But fancy thinking so much about one’s 
great-grandfather ! However, I’m going to set 
to work and look up mine now, my grand- 
parents and great-grandparents an’ what they 
did — so’s to win a patriotic honor-bead for my 
Camp Fire Girl’s necklace ! But it’s different 
with her ^^ — volubly indicating the deaf-and- 
dumb child’s partner, who was now guiding 
her, with expressive pantomime, through the 
mazy windings of a ribbon dance — “ she thinks 
so much of that old sea-captain ancestor be- 
cause she’s got his miniature and because I 
don’t believe she has any living relatives to 
think about. Her father and mother are both 
dead. She’s staying with the Deerings who 
own that beautiful automobile but I don’t think 
she’s related to them, except through their 
elderly cousin ” — nodding toward the bench 


42 GIRLS OF THE 

under the catalpa tree — “who’s her cousin, 
too.” 

“ What is the girl’s name ? ” asked the grey- 
haired peacemaker. 

“Jessica Dee Holley.” 

“ Ha ! ‘ Dee ’ sounds like an old Newburyport 
name ; leastways I’ve seen it in old entries.” 

“ That was her mother’s name. But she isn’t 
alone, although she has no near relatives, be- 
cause she’s a Camp Fire Girl, and we * cleave 
to our Camp Fire Sisters whenever, wherever 
we find them 1 ’ ” Sesooa threw back her head 
with the same loyal gesture as that wherewith 
she had faced the world after stopping the 
horse ; the golden firefly in her eyes hovering 
directly over the Camp Fire flame in her heart. 

From the ranks of the juvenile dancers came, 
now, the joyful lilt of another song . 

** Two by two, 

Two by two, 

Here we go ! 

With merry hearts, 

And a cheerful song, 

As we march in the double row.” 

Two by two, yes, Jessica and her little silent 
partner leading with a vim, she singing for 
both 1 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 43 

Again Sally’s throat tickled and the firefly 
bore a little mist upon its wings as she noted 
the new spirit which had crept into the deaf- 
and-dumb child’s movements, into the clumsy, 
ill-shod feet, into the grey, stocky little figure, 
into the small, stubby fingers which no longer 
plucked wistfully at the gathers of her coarse 
frock, but brightly spread themselves in an in- 
spired attempt to copy the waving gestures of 
the wonderful partner in shining lavender and 
white who had dropped from the clouds for her. 

The sight was moving. The firefly in Sally’s 
eyes went in out of the rain. 

“ She’s going to be initiated as a Fire Maker 
at our next Council Fire gathering,” she mur- 
mured, nodding toward Jessica and hardly 
caring whether her impromptu companion 
understood her meaning or not. ” But, oh ” — 
blinking bright drops from her eyelids — “she 
ought to be a Torch Bearer! She’s a Torch 
Bearer already I Look at the light which she 
has brought into that little dumb girl’s eyes — 
she has lit a torch in her heart.” 

“ Well I I guess she has,” returned the big 
stranger in a moved voice, too. 

“I don’t know whether you know much 
about Camp Fire Girls ” — Sesooa dashed the 


44 


GIRLS OF THE 


bright drops away and the firefly reappeared, 
hovering over a dimple — “but when a girl 
joins the society she takes a symbolic name, 
generally an Indian one, that signifies some- 
thing she aims particularly to do or be. Jessica 
chose that of a climbing flower, the morning- 
glory — or its nearest Indian equivalent — for 
some little secret reason of her own ; that’s what 
made it seem funny — incongruous — you know, 
when you said she danced like a stormy petrel, 
a Mother Carey chicken,” poutingly. 

“ Ah-h ! ” The stranger drew his massive 
brows together ruminating for a minute, his 
eyes on the wavy ribbon dance. “ Ah I but, 
maybe, the two aren’t so wide apart as you 
think.” He turned and nodded at her. “ Take 
a stormy morning at sea, now. I’ve seen the 
dawn, the morning-glory to be, come up, just 
a little grey flutter in the sky — like a dove-grey 
chicken that the foam had hatched — the foam 
that was piled like a great, pale egg against 
the horizon I It’s a funny world, little girl,” 
with an all-comprehensive wink of the sea-blue 
eye. “Things an’ meanings of things are 
never such miles apart but that you can link 
’em, somehow ; an’ that’s true of more than 
foam and flower I ” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 45 

“ Why — Captain Andy / ” 

“ Why~y / Miss Winter I ” 

Cousin Anne had risen suddenly from the 
bench under the catalpa tree, shocked at seeing 
one of the girls whom she was chaperoning 
holding free converse with a stranger. Now 
she was advancing with warmly outstretched 
hand. 

“ Why I Miss Winter, I never expected to 
meet you here.’^ The massive stranger, stand- 
ing bareheaded in the sunshine, was as cordially 
shaking that proffered hand. 

** It^s Captain Andy, my dears I ’’ Miss 
Anne Winter beckoned to the two Deer- 
ing girls, her relatives and special charges. 

Olive ! this is Captain Andrew Davis who 
saved your Cousin Marvin^s life, with that of 
several other young men — college chums — 
when they were wrecked, while yachting a 
couple of years ago, off the Newfoundland 
Coast. You remember?’’ flutteringly. 

‘‘ Oh I yes, indeed.” Olive extended a gra- 
cious, girlish hand ; she was conscious of a little 
creepy thrill at meeting a real live hero, espe- 
cially one who carried the heroism done up in 
such massive bulk, but she had heard her 
Cousin Marvin — before the rescue — speak of 


46 


GIRLS OF THE 


this Captain Andy Davis as being a sea-captain 
in no grand, mercantile way, as commanding 
no big barque, but only what Marvin — likewise 
before the rescue — dubbed a smelly fish-kettle, 
otherwise a New England fishing-schooner, 
little over a hundred feet in length from stem 
to taffrail. 

Heroism had its noble uses, of course, espe- 
cially when one had been stranded for hours as 
Marvin and those other college boys were upon 
sharp, naked rocks, seeing their yacht broken 
to pieces by the mountainous swell of an old sea 
after a storm, death staring them in the face, 
with no hope of rescue, until Captain Andy 
and his gallant “ fish-kettle ” hove in sight and 
bore down upon them — until Captain Andy, 
with a volunteer from his crew, launched a 
dory and succeeded in saving their lives at the 
extreme risk of his own. 

Olive remembered hearing Marvin say that 
he did not believe there was another mariner 
upon the Massachusetts coast who could have 
“ pulled off that rescue with the sea as it was 
then. She thrilled again, looking up into the 
keen blue eye under the heavy lid, into the face 
which had made Jessica think of sheltering 
flame. At the same time, she could not help 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 47 

seeing a gulf — a broad gulf with floating shapes 
of fishy decks, horny hands, scaly oilskins — 
intervene between her and her sister, daughters 
of the bi-millionaire owner of big machine works 
for the manufacture of textile machinery, and 
this limping weather-beaten master mariner. 

Sybil did not even take the trouble to be as 
friendly as she was. 

Meanwhile Cousin Anne, Miss Anne Winter, 
was introducing Captain Andy Davis in proper 
form to Arline and Sally, mentioning the fact 
that the grateful Marvin had taken her to visit 
him when last she was in Gloucester. 

“Oh, I must have felt it in my fingers — or in 
my tongue — that I knew you, or ought to know 
you, or that somebody here knew you, or I 
never would have talked to you so freely I ” de- 
clared Sally in an orange flutter. 

“ And how do you come to be in Clevedon 
just now ? ” questioned Miss Anne, interrogat- 
ing the weather-beaten face. 

“ My artist sent for me.^^ That florid visage 
bloomed all over with a boyish smile that 
gleamed somewhat shamefacedly through the 
thick, fair eyelashes, not yet turned grey. 

‘She said she hadn’t got my ground colors 
right — gee I I didn’t know I had any, except 


GIRLS OF THE 


48 

when my vessel was grounded in the mud. 
‘ Carnation colors ^ she called ’em — jiminy I ” 
His breezy bubble of laughter was caught 
and tossed further by Sally and Arline who 
eagerly hung upon the novelty of his speech. 

‘‘The artist is Miss Loretta Dewey, isn’t 
she ? ” So Miss Anne took him up. “ She 
has taken you for the subject of her sea pic- 
ture : ‘ The Breaker King.’ ” 

“ Yes. I’m highly flattered. I had other 
business in this city, too, besides fixing my 
carnation colors,” with again that boyish laugh 
stirring the thick eyelashes. “I’ve been in 
correspondence with a lady here, a cousin of 
the artist’s, about renting one of my new camps 
at the mouth of the Exmouth River — tidal river, 
you know — for the summer.” (Sally caught 
her breath as if she were fishing for it, rose on 
tiptoe, stared at him breathlessly.) “ The fact 
is. Miss Winter, I’m tired of being a hayseed,” 
the ex-mariner went on — “ tried it for two years 
an’ couldn’t take to it.” 

“ What have you done with your little farm 
among the Essex woods?” 

“Turned it over to my hired man Oh! he’s 
a reformed character, he’ll run it all right ; he’s 
got two anchors out now to leeward an’ win’ard. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 49 

which means he was married a year ago an’ had 
a son born last month. Guess he had the baby 
baptized a Scout,” with a twinkle ; “ he said that 
’twas watching the Boy Scouts an’ their manly 
doin’s that first started him to wanting to hit a 
man’s trail, at last — make a man of himself.” 

But Miss Anne knew that it was Captain 
Andy who had followed up the unconscious 
work of the Scouts by taking that hired man, 
hopeless graduate of a reform school, and 
setting him on his feet again. 

“ You’re not thinking of going to sea any 
more ? ” she asked. 

“No, my damaged spar kind o’ interferes 
with that.” The mariner looked down at his 
lame right leg where the sea left its mark on 
him in his last terrible fight with it. “ But I’m 
gettin’ as near to the ocean as I can while 
staying ashore,” he volunteered. “ I put in this 
past spring building three big, rambling wooden 
shanties — they ain’t much more — which I call 
camps, on the edge of some white sand-dunes, 
wildest spot on the coast of Massachusetts, 
where the tidal river meets the bay, or sea.” 

“ Oh ! it’s not the Sugarloaf sand-dunes ? ” 
squeaked Sesooa, her voice thin and wiry with 
excitement. 


50 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ Very place 1 The white Sugarloaf Pen- 
insula I Just a hundred acres, or so, of tall, 
snowy sand-hills in that part o’ the dunes, and 
wild life a-plenty on dune an’ river — bird, fish, 
an’ mammal, or seal I I’ve rented two of the 
camps already ” — went on the speaker, in the 
teeth of a now prevalent gust of excitement 
which, blowing toward him, threatened to sweep 
him off his feet — ‘‘one to a family, t’other to 
a Jlock; to a lady, right here in this city of 
Clevedon, who’s going to bring ten or twelve 
young girls with her, to camp out, some of ’em 
lately started upon a cruise of their ’teens, 
others about midway of the voyage,” with a 
deep gurgle of laughter like the briny bubble 
of the sea. 

“ Did she — did she say they were a Camp 
Fire Group?” Sesooa’s hands were clasped 
upon a flame of suspense so eager that it 
almost scorched them. 

“ Come to think of it, now, I guess she did 1 
I’ve heard a lot about that tribe, in general, 
lately. Boy Scouts an’ Camp Fire Girls, they’re 
in the spot light just now.” 

“ They deserve to be. And was the Guard- 
ian’s — the lady’s — name Miss Dewey ? 

“You’ve hit it. I’m to be watch-dog and 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 51 

life-guard to the flock — Fll have a tent o’ my 
own near.” 

“ Then, it’s us I It’s us, Captain Andy ! ” 
cried the Rainbow and the Flame together. 
‘‘ It’s our Morning-Glory Camp Fire that has 
rented your camp for the remainder of this 
month of July and all the month of August — 
the Green Corn Moon. Oh, we’re so glad to 
have met you — that you’re going to be our 
camp guard and protector ! ” 

“ Land o’ Goshen ! you ’ain’t got no corner 
on the gladness ; that I tell you.” The old life- 
saver beamed. “ Is she coming, too ? ” point- 
ing to the girlish figure in the flower-like Tam 
among the shifting playground sets. Is she 
going to camp on the dunes, too, the one that 
dances like a foam-chicken or a foam-clot — the 
Morning-Glory one ? ” 

“ Of course she is.” 

“ I suppose, now, you’d call her a — what-d’ye- 
call-it — anaesthetic dancer, eh ? ” with an inquis- 
itive twinkle. 

‘‘.Esthetic,” corrected Olive, smiling a su- 
perior little smile. ** Anaesthetic is a thing that 
puts people to sleep when they’re in pain — a 
medicine.” 

“ Oh 1 aye, I put my foot in the medicine. 


52 


GIRLS OF THE 


did I ? gasped the squelched captain, his 
** carnation colors ” deepening. 

From the playground came the cooing words 
of yet another song, dramatic, disconnected, 
marking the close of the afternoon’s singing 
games and folk-dances : 

‘‘ Bluebird, bluebird, through my window I 
Oh, Jennie, I’m tired ! ” 

At the two random lines, children’s heads 
were dropped each upon the other’s shoulder in 
mock fatigue, resting there a moment in drowsy 
confidence. 

“Turk, Armenian, Teuton, Slav, an’ almost 
every other race thrown in — Lord I if that ain’t 
a Peace Conference to beat the Hague,” mut- 
tered Captain Andy, his eyes watering as they 
scanned the faces of those foreign buds. 

“I think he’s great — and I don’t mean it 
slangily either! He ts Great,” said impulsive 
Sally in an aside to Olive. “ Oh ! why don’t 
Sybil and you join our Camp Fire tribe and 
camp with us, too, upon his Sugarloaf dunes. I 
feel like shouting when I think of the fun we’ll 
have, rowing and swimming, singing and danc- 
ing our Indian dances, the Leaf Dance and 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 53 

Duck Dance that Morning-Glory is going to 
teach us — she learned them from a professor 
who learned them from the Indians — among 
those crystal, sugary, sandy dunes/^ 

Yes, and cooking your own meals, by turns, 
laundering your own blouses, washing camp 
dishes — glorifying work, as you call it I That 
wouldn’t suit me.” Olive shook her satin curl. 
“ Sybil and I — with Cousin Anne, of course — 
are going to spend August at an hotel on the 
North Shore. We^ll have plenty of dancing, 
too ; it’s a very fashionable, exclusive hotel and 
the most expensive teacher of up-to-date dances 
is coming from New York to give lessons to the 
guests, including Sybil and me ; I teased Father 
until he said we might learn from him — other- 
wise, we shan’t have a study or a thing to do 
but to amuse ourselves all day long.” 

The bright flame of Sally’s enthusiasm 
wavered and paled like a candle-flame in gar- 
ish sunshine. Her face fell. To her versatile, 
girlish fancy the picture which Olive painted of 
the coming August was richer in coloring, more 
dazzlingly gilded in frame — with the modern 
dancing thrown in — than any that the crystal 
Sugarloaf could offer, even when peopled with 
fringed and beaded Camp Fire Girls. 


54 


GIRLS OF THE 


Crestfallen, she looked at Captain Andy, 
partly to hide her chagrin. 

He was staring fixedly at the playground be- 
fore him, where a dumb child unable to reach 
up and drop her head upon a seventeen-year- 
old girl’s lavender shoulder — as the other chil- 
dren were doing with their partners — laid it 
upon her breast. 

Bless her heart of gold, that girl I ” he 
breathed, his strong face working. “ Whether 
you call her ‘ Morning-Glory ’ or foam-chicken, 
I say bless her heart for calling the bluebird 
through a dumb child’s window when she can’t 
call it for herself. ... I had a little sister, 
long ago, born deaf an’ dumb ; she only lived to 
be four. I played with her until she died. . . . 
I take off my hat to that Camp Fire Girl.” 

“ Oh-h ! ” exploded Sesooa between a sob 
and a song which together cleared the horizon 
and righted her toppling enthusiasm ; that in 
girlhood to which Captain Andy, hero of a 
hundred sea-fights, bared his head, as he rev- 
erently did, was best worth while ; unwittingly 
he, a connoisseur in Life, had put his finger on 
that which was lacking in Olive’s picture, pres- 
ent in this : the seeking Beauty not for oneself 
alone, not in one’s own life only, but to see it 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 55 

blossom in dull, sad, silent corners of the 
human garden, the Camp Fire ideal. 

Swept upon a tide of reaction Sally turned 
passionately to Cousin Anne. “ Oh, Jessica is 
the dandiest girl,” she exclaimed, slangy with 
emotion. “ Oh I Miss Anne, I do want to ask 
you a question ; do you know, won’t you tell 
me, why she was bent on choosing Morning- 
Glory as her Camp Fire name and emblem, 
why she was called ‘ Glory ’ as a pet name be- 
fore?” 

‘‘ It was because of a little incident in her 
childhood.” 

“ Yes, I know ! And this playground, teem- 
ing with children, is the very place to hear it,” 
seconded Arline, chiming in. 

“Well, I don’t think she would mind my 
telling you girls, it’s such a trifling little story, 
but because it’s so tenderly connected with her 
mother, who died a little more than two years 
ago, she doesn’t care to speak of it herself ; her 
mother was my cousin.” 

“ Yes? ” breathed the expectant girls. 

“ I used to visit them when Jessica was a 
little child ; she loved flowers from the time she 
was a baby girl, and her mother invented a 
‘ flower game ’ which she used to play with her 


56 


GIRLS OF THE 


at night after the child was in bed, so that she 
might fall asleep with a happy impression on 
her mind ; the mother would begin, ‘ I am your 
rose,’ to which the drowsy little voice would 
answer, * I am your violet,’ or something like 
that and so on through all the flowers they 
could name, until Jessica was asleep. 

“ Well I one night the game went on as 
usual : ‘ I am your rose,’ * I am your vi’let;’ ‘ I 
am your pansy,’ * I am your lily ; ’ ‘ I am your 
dandelion,’ * I am your nasturtium ; ’ ‘I am 
your lily of the valley,’ but to this there was no 
answer — the mother had the last word — ^Jessica 
was fast asleep. 

“ Early next morning, however, her mother 
was awakened by two little arms stealing round 
her neck, by a moist little mouth pressed to her 
cheek and a child’s voice saying softly into her 
ear : ‘ Mamma ! Mamma I I am your morn- 
ing-glory 1 ’ 

“ Somehow, under cover of sleep, the seed of 
the flower game had lingered in her mind all 
night, to blossom in the morning.” Miss Anne 
gently blinked at such mysteries, looking be- 
fore her at the dissolving playground sets. 

“ Oh-h, if that isn’t the sweetest child-story ! ” 
burst from Sally in subdued applause. “ I’m 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 57 

so glad that you told it to us, satisfied our curi- 
osity/^ 

“Yes, and we’ll have such a pretty little 
anecdote to relate, in turn, at our next Council 
Fire gathering — when we’re supposed to tell of 
some kind deed which we’ve seen done — about 
how the Morning-Glory danced with the dumb 
child, gave her such a good time this morning. 
I wish I could write it up in verse — even blank 
verse,” yearned Arline aspiringly. “ You’ll be 
there, won’t you, Miss Anne ? ” 

“ Of course she will ; it’s to be held outdoors, 
if the weather is fine, upon the lake shore at 
the foot of Wigwam Hill, where you can almost 
see the ghosts of Indians — who camped there in 
numbers, nearly two hundred years ago — mov- 
ing about. Of course she’ll be there and Cap- 
tain Andy, too, to see me light a fire without 
matches and watch us dance the Leaf Dance ! ” 
Sesooa whirled like an orange leaf in a gust of 
reinstated enthusiasm. “ Hurrah for our Morn- 
ing-Glory Camp Fire 1 Hurrah and hurrah 
again for Camp Morning-Glory — our camp 
that is to be — on the far-away Sugarloaf I ” her 
mind’s eye exploring those white Sugarloaf 
dunes, amid which she would revel. Puck-like, 
fairy-like, by the light of the Green Corn Moon. 


CHAPTER IV 


A LAKESIDE COUNCIL FIRE 

Wo-he-lo for aye, 

Wo-he-lo for aye, Wo-he-lo, 

Wo-he-lo, Wo-he-lo for aye ! 

Wo-he-lo for work, 

Wo-he-lo for health, 

Wo-he-lo, Wo-he-lo, 

Wo-he-lo for Love 1 ” 

O N Wigwam Hill the pine-tree — the noble 
standing pine, emblem of “ simplicity 
and strength,” symbol of membership 
in the Camp Fire Sisterhood — bent its head, 
listening with every needle, as if it knew itself 
the special patron of this winding chant. Maple 
and elm-tree, amid whose rich foliage reposed 
like flaming birds of paradise the last rays of 
the setting sun, fluttered their approval as the 
chanting procession wound beneath them. The 
white-birch-tree rocked with applause. The 
evening breeze curled the ears of the lake and 
bade it listen to “ Wohelo I ” 

Only the great-horned, straw-eyed owl, a 
58 


THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 59 

life prisoner on the lake shore — imprisoned 
years ago by some naturalist who led a hermit’s 
existence within a stone’s throw of the water — 
ruffled his dappled plumage until he looked as 
big as an eagle upon the dim perch of his cage- 
house, and pessimistically hissed the chant. 

He might have hooted, but in captivity he 
had lost his voice, was as dumb, so far as 
natural expression went, as the little deaf-mute 
of the city playground, reduced to declaring his 
feelings, — highly embittered ones, — by a goose- 
like hiss. 

“ Poor old owl, I do feel so sorry for you — 
you poor, soured old prisoner 1 ” murmured the 
fringed and beaded leader of the chanting 
Wohelo procession, winding out from the leafy 
foot of Wigwam Hill past the captive’s cage, as 
she met the painted eye, golden as a wheaten 
straw and as lifeless, with a little black dot of a 
pupil within the yellow ring. 

Whereupon the captive opened his beak until 
she could almost see past the roots of the pink, 
kitten-like tongue down into his stomach, and 
hissed her, turning his head upon its swivel 
neck, without moving another muscle or feather 
of his body, until he faced, now, sideways, now, 
directly backward, taking stock of the girl- 


6o 


GIRLS OF THE 


leader’s brown-robed followers. At intervals 
he lowered over the painted-looking straw-eye 
the tiny, mysterious curtain, grey as asbestos, 
which he kept tucked up under his eyelid, as if 
the stately procession of fourteen brown figures 
gliding, single file, in and out among the out- 
standing tree-trunks, with pearly glitter of 
head-band and flash of many-colored honor- 
beads upon girlish necks, dazzled him. 

“ Good land ! is it old Wigwam Hill — or the 
maidens who sleep in that Indian graveyard on 
the top of it — come to life?” gasped Captain 
Andy to his artist ” who had kept him in the city 
in order to paint his ground colors, the hardy 
flame of the skin, the indomitable blue of the eye, 
for her picture of “ The Breaker King.” “ Only 
ril wager those dead-an’-gone maidens couldn’t 
touch these in looks or in the bravery of their 
beads an’ fixings ; I’ve seen all sorts of fashions 
an’ rigs, but this is a style of its own — eh ? ” 
He gave a breezy puff of admiration as his 
mariner’s eye followed the procession of 
maidens in leather-fringed khaki, lit by em- 
broidery and bead, the filleted figures whose 
hair fell in long braids to their waists, Morning- 
Glory (to-night to be initiated into higher rank) 
leading, as they crossed an open space upon 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 6i 


the lake shore and glided past a stationary 
figure of mature grace, with a yellow sun em- 
broidered upon the left breast of her ceremonial 
dress, which matched theirs. 

“It is Gheezies, our Guardian — Guardian of 
the Morning-Glory Camp Fire,’^ was the joyous 
recognition in each girlish breast, as the mem- 
bers of the procession, in turn, saluted her with 
a hand-sign, their right arms gracefully up- 
raised, following the curves of an imaginary 
flame, the hand-sign of fire ; fire of the heart and 
fire of the hearth, fire of the sun and fire beneath 
the shingled or slated roof-tree that shelters a 
home, being the glowing symbol of the Camp 
Fire Girl. 

One of the saluting figures, third in the pro- 
cession, which even in ceremonial beads and 
fringes had something familiar about it to Cap- 
tain Andy, had a small bow of polished wood 
slung upon her right arm upraised in the hand- 
sign. 

“ Well I I wondered, bein^ Indian maidens, 
that they had no bows an’ arrows among ’em ; 
that redeems it,” muttered the highly diverted 
captain. 

“ Oh, but she isn’t going to shoot an arrow 
from that bow, else you and I might look out 


62 


GIRLS OF THE 


for punctures ! ” laughed the artist. “ She’s 
going to coax the arrow of fire out of dull wood 
with it — see the notched fireboard and drill in 
her left hand — going to kindle the Council Fire 
without matches ! ” 

“ Well, if she does that, she’ll make me sit 
up an’ take notice I My word 1 how often I’ve 
tried that trick, raked over heaven an’ earth, as 
you might say, for the means o’ making a fire 
— an’ that more’n once, too — when I’ve been 
shipwrecked and freezing all night on a lone- 
some shore.” 

‘‘ Hadn’t you any matches ? ” questioned 
Olive Deering who sat upon a fallen pine-log 
near the captain’s boulder, also a guest at this 
open-air Council Fire, not yet kindled. 

“ The sea took ’em when it ripped off my 
sou’wester, the matches being in a flannel 
pocket of its lining. I tell you, little lady, I 
had hard work to hold on to my scalp, an’ so 
had every member o’ my crew, too, swimming 
forty or fifty yards to fight for a foothold on 
naked rocks, in an icy sea that pounded a 
man as if bent on breaking every bone in 
his body — that was the worst time when we 
were wrecked off the island o’ Grand Manan 
in a November breeze, when some of us spent 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 63 

the night clinging to icy ledges, Pothers crawled 
up, bleeding an’ frost-bitten, to where there was 
wood — Lord ! what we wouldn’t ha’ given to 
know the secret o’ getting fire without matches 
then. You don’t tell me a girl can do it? I 
guess she may, perhaps — when sprats swallow 
sharks, as we sailors say!” he added, with a 
sceptical chuckle. 

“Well! wait and see the shark eaten up — 
the impossible done I ” laughed the artist trust- 
fully. 

In the gathering dusk Olive’s dark eyebrows 
were drawn together; from her windfall log, 
where she sat side by side with Sybil, she 
looked sidewise scrutinizingly at the grey- 
haired master mariner; she was beginning to 
see the gulf which yawned between him and 
her filled not with shapes of slimy decks, gurry- 
pens and fish-scaled oilskins, but with the tow- 
ering masts of human courage and heroism that 
reached unto the sky, piercing Death’s very 
shadow, outsailing and outwitting that pale 
spectre a hundred times to save human life. 

“ I wonder — I wonder whether ‘ the sprat will 
swallow the shark’: whether Sally will really 
succeed in getting fire without matches ? ” she 
quivered, leaning forward with a new interest 


64 


GIRLS OF THE 


in the performance which had, before, seemed 
merely spectacular, what the boys would call a 
** showing-ofi stunt/’ 

And, now, the fringed and beaded Camp Fire 
Girl was kneeling on her right knee upon the 
burnished sod of the lake shore, her left foot 
pressing down hard upon the flat fireboard in 
which there was a little scooped pit or hollow 
merging into a notch in the edge of the board, 
resting upon a thin little wooden tray placed 
beneath it. 

Her left hand — its wide-sleeved arm braced 
against the knee of that firmly planted left leg 
— grasped the handle or socket of her upright 
drill, about a dozen inches in length, her right 
steadily worked back and forth the bow, drawn 
taut by its leather thong, which rested upon 
that socket at the top of the drill, whose sharp- 
ened lower point, thus worked, turned boringly 
in the scooped hollow of the fireboard — grind- 
ing its soft punky wood into a brown sawdust 
which in a few seconds turned black as it fell 
upon the tray beneath. 

It was a wonderful picture — so the artist 
thought — this linking of the far past with the 
present, primitive woman with civilization, 
while old Wigwam Hill looked darkly on. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 65 

Captain Andy was, indeed, sitting up and 
taking notice, his massive figure leaning 
slightly forward, hands outspread upon his 
knees, in breathless interest : was the sprat,” 
actually, going to “ eat up the shark,” a girl 
achieve the feat — perform the igniting won- 
der — which bearded men in the grip of 
deadly cold and desolation had attempted in 
vain ? 

True, in these strange days, he had seen a 
Boy Scout work that fire trick and get a spark 
in about thirty seconds. But a girl I 

” Seems to me I know that little fire-witch, 
too,” he murmured to the artist. Ain’t she 
the one that was fluttering round like an oriole 
in orange and black on the playground t’other 
day an’ that made friends? . . . My living 

sakes ! she’s got it. See — see her smoke / ” 
meaning the black powdered wood running out 
of the notch in the edge of the fireboard onto 
the tray, under the steady grinding of the drill 
— not the fire-witch, Sesooa. 

Yes, grey and hopeful, it rose, that tiny cloud 
of smoke upon the golden air. Sally’s Camp 
Fire Sisters held their breath, poised on tiptoe. 
Wood Gatherers they, according to rank and 
in deed, who had been gathering inflammable 


66 


GIRLS OF THE 


birch-bark and fat pine-splinters, piling them 
together, in hope and faith, as the nucleus of 
their coming Council Fire. 

“ Oh ! I shall die if she doesn^t get the flame, 
now she’s got the smoke ! ” quavered little fair- 
haired Betty Ayres, whose Camp Fire name 
was Psuti, the Holly, fluttering, with arms out- 
spread, like a brown moth with a touch of gold 
upon its wings. “ Sesooa will be so mortified 
if she fails, with visitors present.” 

“She won’t fail. She can’t ! I see the red ! 
Don’t you — don’t you see it, the red spark ? ” 
The quivering cry came from Miinkwon, 
Arline. 

Yes, the airy smoke was increasing, wheel- 
ing upward in a tiny spiral and at its heart 
appeared the miracle — a dull red spark, like a 
fire-seed sown by the vanished sun. 

“ Hurrah ! shds got it. Hush, don’t speak ! 
Don’t startle her. She has yet to make it 
burn.” 

But, now, Sesooa — one breathing, quivering 
foster-flame herself, with cheeks on fire — was 
holding some tinder, shredded cedar-wood, 
down upon the spark, shielded by a fragment 
of birch-bark. It was the crucial moment of 
all. Rising upon one knee, gently she blew 



“She won’t fail. She can’t ! I see the red !" — Page 66. 




• * “• • • 




1 9 



MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 67 

upon it, the fire-witch, fanning it with the 
quivering breath of her own life. 

It blazed. The day was won. 

“ Good life alive ! that stumps me ; I never 
thought of a girl doing that.’^ The cry came 
in a tempestuous gust from Captain Andy. 

“ She got the fire in exactly fifty-one seconds 
from the time she started drilling; I timed 
her.” The artist was peering through the 
dusk at the watch upon her knee. 

‘‘ Well, they’ll light their Council Fire now ; 
it ought to be a booming one. Here’s for 
gathering some good chunks from the edge of 
the woods to swell it I ” The captain, who had 
already found his feet in excitement, limped 
toward the tree-clad foot of Wigwam Hill — 
whistling and chanting boisterously, boyishly, 
in amazed elation over the feat which he had 
witnessed : 

** Singing whack fol de ri-do ! 

’Twill comfort their souls, 

To get such fine fagots, 

When they’ve got no coals ! 

** Young Maidee, young Maidee, 

If 1 tell you true, 

I’m keeping some fagots 
And sticks, too, for you ! ” 


68 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ We’ll accept the fagots, although we gen- 
erally don’t take any help in the building of 
our Council Fire I ” cried one of the girlish 
Wood Gatherers running toward him in the 
gloaming, holding up her left hand on which 
the silver fagot ring gleamed. “ But don’t you 
dare — dare sing the rest of that song on peril 
of your life I I can sing it, too : 

“ A woman, a dog, 

And an old walnut-tree. 

The more that you whacks ’em 
The better they’ll be ! 

We’re Camp Fire Girls ; we grow by work- 
ing, not by whacking.” 

“ Whoo ! Whoo I Hulla-baloo ! Pepper- 
corns and fire-sticks 1 Have I put my foot in 
it again, as I did on the playground, mixing 
up medicine and dancing ? ” roared the rueful 
mariner. “ There I even that old caged bird is 
hissing me, as if he had a goose-head, not an 
owl’s, upon his swivel shoulders.” 

So, fanned by laughter, fostered with song, 
the Council Fire grew until it threw a far re- 
flection on the lake waters and lit up many a 
nook known to Indian maidens of yore, at the 
foot of the historic hill. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 69 

“ Now comes the most important part of the 
Council Fire program, the initiation of one girl 
into the rank of Fire Maker, higher than that 
of Wood Gatherer, which she has borne since 
her first initiation ! ” 

So spoke the artist after certain prelimi- 
nary ceremonies had taken place, such as 
the awarding of new honor-beads, two red 
honors to Sesooa for feats of horseback riding 
and for feeding, petting, and combing a horse 
from mane to tail during a period of thirty 
days — a prancing routine dignified as Health 
Craft ! 

Other honors, flame-colored mostly, were 
chiefly for homely duties such as girls had al- 
ways performed, often with a shrug that labeled 
them humdrum, seeing no glamor about them 
until they were painted rose-color forever by 
an honor-bead strung upon a leather thong, 
by the light of the magically kindled Council 
Fire. 

‘‘Who^s the lucky girl that gains higher 
rank ? ” yawned Captain Andy whose mascu- 
line interest flagged a little. ** If you don^t 
stop hissing, Fll wring your swivel neck I this 
to the owl. ‘‘ I tried freeing that bird this even- 
ing when the old naturalist’s back was turned — 


70 


GIRLS OF THE 


couldn^t warm to the idea of his enduring a 
prison life-sentence — and, will you believe it, he 
couldn’t fly two yards, had lost his wing-power, 
as well as his hoot, through not using it. I had 
to hustle him back into his cage, with a bitten 
finger, to prevent the camp dogs from getting 
him. Ha I so that’s the candidate for rank, 
eh ” — looking toward the Council Fire again — 
“ the Morning-Glory girl that dances like a leaf 
in a gust, or a foam-chicken — or anything else 
that’s lighter’n a puff ? ” 

Welatawesit was giving a demonstration of 
another kind now, vaunting her skill at first aid 
by bandaging Betty. Then something white, 
larger than a bandage, fluttered in the flame- 
stabled twilight ; it might have been a child’s 
frock. 

Softly through the dusk came the voice 
of the deaf-and-dumb child’s partner, conse- 
crating her girlish powers to the fire of human- 
kind : 

** For I will tend, 

As my fathers have tended, 

And my fathers’ fathers. 

Since time began, 

The fire that is called. 

The love of man for man. 

The love of man for God.’* 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 71 

“ An^ without those two fires this old world 
would be about as warm an’ cheerful as an ice- 
jammed hull, eh ? ” commented Captain Andy, 
intent upon the mature figure of the Guardian 
who, ruddily outlined in the flame-light, was 
placing upon the arm of the new Fire Maker 
the silver insignia of her rank, the Fire Maker’s 
bracelet. 

“ I think Jessica is the sorr i girl who natu- 
rally tends that heart-fire without which the 
world would be out in the cold ! ” remarked 
Cousin Anne at this point, leaning forward 
from her seat upon a fallen tree-trunk. “ One 
of her Camp Fire Sisters, Munkwon — who is 
at the head of her high school class in composi- 
tion — has blossomed forth into blank verse to 
celebrate the little incident of her dancing with 
the deaf-mute on the playground — and some 
other things which she has been trying to do for 
the child.” 

Yes, there’s Arline fluttering her poetic 
wing-feathers now I ” smiled the artist. 

“She does well to flutter ’em.” Captain 
Andy looked from under his heavy eyelids, 
massive like all else about him, at the girlish 
figure sitting nearest to the Council Fire, hold- 
ing a paper near to the blaze which picked out 


72 


GIRLS OF THE 


the sportive rainbows of embroidery on her 
dress and in her pearly head-band. ‘‘Thunder I 
if she didn’t preen ’em at all, even if they’re 
only pin-feathers, she might lose the use of 
some valu’ble ones, like the poor old owl, there, 
that gave me a sore finger for trying to coax 
him to fly,” breezily. 

“ Hush I listen ; she’s beginning,” adjured 
Olive, as a rainbowed voice, arching a little 
cloud of girlish embarrassment, fell upon the 
firelight : 

When the Moon of Thunder causeth 
School to cease and fields to blossom, 

Sendeth forth its quivering light-bolt. 

Heats the earth with dazzling sun-ray. 

Come the children to the Playground, 

Come the merry-hearted children. 

Group round swing and teeter-ladder. 

Dance their strange and quaint folk-dances 
Underneath the flowering shade-tree. 

Frolic in the sparkling water. 

Shallow pool of rainbowed water, 

But there cometh one among them, 

Maiden of eight summers only, 

Heareth not a note of music. 

Hath no voice for song or laughter. 

Slow of foot and dull of eye she, 

And the pitying children shun her. 

Then the flower of the Camp Fire, 

" Pretty Flower,’ Morning-Glory, 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 73 

With a foot as light as foam-clot 
And a tender heart within her, 

Takes that sad-eyed maiden gently 
By the hand and gaily leads her, 

Wins her to pick grapes in fancy. 

Grapes of sunshine from the greensward, 

Calls the Bluebird through her window 
To sing its song within that dumb heart. 

Fashions her a robe of linen, 

Brings her moccasin of leather. . . 

(“ ’Twas I who bought the ‘ moccasins,^ — such 
a pretty little pair of shoes with buckles ! ” put 
in Olive so^^o voce.') 

And where’er her Camp Fire Sisters 
Pitch their tents by lake or river. 

This the deed shall be remembered 
Of Welatawesit — Morning-Glory ! ” 

wound up Arline triumphantly, much to the 
embarrassment of the subject of the poem who 
sat midway of the circle round the Council 
Fire, shielding her scorched cheeks from the 
flame-light. 

“ Good ! I call that pretty good I Captain 
Andy clapped heartily. “ Tain^t poetry, but 
it goes — like a vessel under a ‘jury rig,^ with 
a discounting wink. 

“ Pshaw I I could write rafts of that stuff,” 
came softly from Olive Deering. “ I do try 


GIRLS OF THE 


74 

my hand at it sometimes, but Sybil laughs at 
me.” 

“ Yes, no sooner did she get here this even- 
ing than she fell to composing a poem about 
that old caged owl : 

“ An owl he longed for his greenwood tree, 

Was pining to be free, 

And never a goose in the farmyard wide 
Hissed half so sore as he ! 

That’s how it went ! ” laughed airy Sybil. 

“ Come now 1 to my mind that goes better 
than the other,” chuckled the mariner, whose 
one idea of verse was a lyric or a limerick. 
“ Poetry that has no rhyme to it is a lame 
makeshift, like a ‘jury rig’ replacing real 
spars. So your little sister laughs at your — 
um-m — poetic wing-feathers, does she ? ” look- 
ing directly at Olive. “Well, 1 wouldn’t stunt 
’em for all that! Seems to me, now, that 
Council Fire is a pretty good incubator for the 
hatching out of new wing-feathers — or pin- 
feathers, eh ? ” chuckling again. 

“Jolly Neptune! which wing are they wav- 
ing now, the right or the left — or have they 
grown a third, a new-fangled one, all in a 
hurry?” he inquired of his invisible sea-god. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 75 

after an interval, as strange, crooning syllables, 
weirdly repeated, fell upon his ear : 

Ga' hyo ne' he 
He ga' hyo ne he ya 
Ga hyo ne' he 
He ga hyo ne he ya 
Ho dji ge hya ! ” 

The fringed and beaded maidens were on 
their feet now, circling, shuffling, Indian fash- 
ion, round the fire, the leader shaking a child’s 
hand-rattle aloft between the fingers of her 
right hand whose arm waved mystically toward 
the fire. 

“ I do believe she^s the one that dared me to 
sing the last verse of that old fagot-song about 
a woman, a dog and an old walnut-tree bein’ 
improved by whacking I ” rumbled the captain, 
rubbing his hands. “ Gee whiz ! it’s a good 
entertainment. And it ought to be, to keep a 
man o’ my age sitting for an hour an’ a half on 
a cold stone ! ” ruefully feeling his boulder- 
bench. 

“Yes, she’s the very one: her Camp Fire 
name is Weltaak, meaning music, and she has 
the G clef, together with a bar of music, 
woven as a symbol into her head-band,” said 
Sybil. 


76 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ She^s * some singer/ too. I wonder if the 
ghosts on old Wigwam Hill are waking up to 
listen to this ? ” 

Captain Andy glanced behind him, swaying 
with a half-superstitious shudder as the sweet, 
eerie notes of the dance-music fell upon his 
ear ; 




1 





La . "i H--! 



-pf'- # 





X X ? 

" r 1 1 

imb bu r *' P 

4==p±zfczH 


Repeat four times. Cry. 

Old Wigwam Hill did, indeed, seem, in an 
interlude of the dance, to ruffle every leaf upon 
its sides as if, Rip-Van-Winkle-like, it had 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 77 

fallen asleep a couple of hundred years ago, 
was now rubbing its eyes and waking up to 
be saluted by sounds much like those which 
had set it dozing, when braves in bonnets of 
feathers danced with their painted squaws upon 
the lake shore. 

“ That^s an Indian dance, the Leaf Dance, 
in honor of the leaves — idiwissi^ or ‘ tree hair ^ 
— thanking them for their grateful shade,” ex- 
plained Olive, watching the winding, gesturing 
figures of the Camp Fire Girls, whose cere- 
monial dresses the Council Fire lit up with 
wonderfully dramatic effect as they circled 
round and round it. 

‘‘ Morning-Glory taught it to them ; she 
learned it from a friend who picked it up in 
the camps of the Creek Indians,” supplemented 
the artist. 

‘‘ But those queer little Indian words that 
they’re chanting have no meaning ; they’re 
just nonsense syllables such as ‘ Tara-ra boom 
de ay I ’ or something like that,” laughed Sybil. 

Goodness ! how I wish a little niece o’ 
mine, named Kitty Sill, who spends half her 
time mooning under orchard leaves, could 
watch that dance,” suddenly interjected the 
captain in tones that seemed to come up from 


78 


GIRLS OF THE 


his boots they were so deep and yearning. 
“ She’s a queer little thing, fourteen last month 
an’ as shy — ^just as shy as a sickle-bill curlew ! ” 
searching for a simile. 

“ What makes her like that ? ” asked Olive ; 
she was beginning to feel an unaccount- 
able interest in everything connected with 
Captain Andy ; his nautical humor set against 
the harrowing experiences of his life, combined 
with his rescue of her Cousin Marvin, had, by 
this time, set every pulse of hero-worship in her 
throbbing. 

“ Search me I I don’t know what makes 
Kitty like that,” came the answer in a sort of 
deep, protesting shout. “ Maybe, now, the 
well-bred pig that she confides in more’n she 
does in her family knows, but if she does, con- 
found it ! she ain’t telling.” 

“ A pet pig-g I Ugh ! ” Sybil shuddered. 

** Her mother thinks that little Kitty has 
taken a troublesome notion o’ some sort into her 
head that makes her so faint-hearted an’ foolish. 
Who knows but that if she were to join these 
new-fangled — or old-fangled — Camp Fire Girls 
an’ grow a few extry wing-feathers — high- 
colored ones, so to speak, such as learning 
how to start a fire without matches, an’ dance 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 79 

like a leaf on a tree — she’d forget all about it ? ’* 
speculatively. 

“ Oh I Fm sure she would,” came from 
Olive with a fervor that surprised herself. 
“ That old owl is a horrible example against 
clipping one’s wings, not using any little powers 
one has!” laughingly. “You listen to that, 
Sybil, and don’t laugh at my flights any more 1 ” 

Yet that night when in the sanctum of her 
own room Olive seated herself upon a corner 
of her bed — a rare breach of orderliness for her 
— and thence, as from a white throne, reviewed 
the evening’s proceedings which she marshaled 
before her, her thoughts did not long dwell 
upon poetic flights or matchless fires — or even 
upon the dramatic Leaf Dance. 

They rested chiefly upon the initiation of the 
new Fire Maker, of a girl standing before the 
Council Fire, promising to tend, as her fathers 
had tended, those twin-fires which are the very 
heart-flame of humanity, without which, as 
Captain Andy said, the world would be cold as 
an ice-jammed hull. 

Feeling is life. And there is nothing like a 
romantic ritual for stirring emotion. Olive felt 
it tingle all over her. 

Her chin quivered as she looked up at the 


8o THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 


picture of a beautiful woman upon the delicately 
tinted wall of the pretty bedroom — that of the 
mother who had died when she was twelve. 

The dark Southern eyes, which her own re- 
flected, called to her. 

She rose and stood before the picture. 

Mother I ” she whispered, palpitating. 
“Mother!” above a breath. “I am scarce 
sixteen and a half now : I — might — begin to 
take your place more with Father — and with 
Sybil, too I ” 

When, in that holy of holies, a girPs prayer- 
nook, Olive knelt a little later, the growing 
wing-feather for which she prayed was not a 
rhyming-power — nor power to match any one 
of the feats which she had to-night seen per- 
formed — but that she might soar to be like her 
mother. 


CHAPTER V 


A MINIATURE 


ESSICA ! Ho ! Jessica-a. Olive is 



looking for you-u, Jessica. She’s gone 


^ into the library now.” Sybil Deering’s 
high, laughing voice, rilling and trilling on 
terminal vowels like the spring note of a 
meadow-lark, rang up the broad staircase of the 
Deering mansion. 

‘‘ Oh ! is she ? I’m coming. I’ll be down in 
just a minute,” sang back the girlish tones 
which had called the Bluebird on the play- 
ground ; in the smallest of the guest-rooms up- 
stairs — a pretty nest, like Olive’s bedroom — 
Jessica Holley laid down a paint-brush, closed 
a box of water-colors which looked as if it had 
seen service in other hands than hers, thrust 
aside a smeared palette, daubed with burnt 
sienna, yellow and black, on which she had 
been experimenting with colors in order to get 
something like the right shade for a Camp Fire 
Girl’s ceremonial dress of khaki and, forthwith, 
proceeded to the library. 


8i 


82 


GIRLS OF THE 


“Jessica, when are we going to take those 
things to the little deaf-and-dumb girl, the frock 
you made for her — which you exhibited at the 
Council Fire last night — and the shoes I bought ? 
Pm just longing to see her in them,’^ said Olive 
directly she showed her nose within the realm 
of books. 

“ Immediately after luncheon ; Fve got a plan. 
Fm going to call up Arline and Sally — Betty 
Ayres wants to come with us, too — and tell them ’ 
about it ; we’ll time our start so’s to arrive on 
the playground a little after two o’clock, before 
the playground teachers get back from dinner, 
and if little ’Becca is there (did I tell you I had 
found out that her name is Rebecca?) we’ll 
just inveigle her into a shed and dress her up 
in the new finery, throw away the old shoes, 
perhaps, the grey frock, too — then, when the 
teachers turn up and the dancing begins, the 
other children won’t know her.” 

“ She won’t know herself. Did you find out 
whether she was born deaf and dumb?” 

“No. She became stone-deaf at four years 
old after scarlet fever ; then she gradually lost 
the power of speech, too, so her mother told one 
of the playground teachers. Her parents are 
Russian Jews who have only been a couple of 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 83 

years in this country. The teacher thinks that 
some of the croaking sounds she makes are 
fragments of words in her own tongue that she 
remembers. And once when some boys were 
shouting ‘Swing! Swing 1^ upon the play- 
ground, ^Becca said ‘ Swing 1 ’ quite clearly, as 
if she caught some vibration of the sound.'^ 

“ I should think she could be taught to speak 
again by and by.^^ Olive looked hopeful. 
“ Come out of your dreamland, Jessica,” she 
added laughingly ; “ stick to Rebecca and the 
playground plan 1 Whenever you’re in the 
library, morning, noon or night, you’re staring 
at that stained-glass window. I believe you’ve 
fallen in love with the young scribe who’s bend- 
ing over a parchment book in it.” 

“ No, but I’m in love with his brown robe.” 
Jessica’s eyes went up to the rich gold-brown of 
the young monk’s habit. “I’ve just been try- 
ing to get something like that tint on my pal- 
ette up-stairs, so as to paint the ceremonial dress 
on the figure of a Camp Fire Girl. Besides ” — 
the blue-grey eyes of Morning-Glory rested rev- 
erently upon the soft radiance of the painted 
window through which the daylight flickered, 
glorified — “ besides, as you know, Olive, my 
father was a stained-glass artist ; he designed 


84 


GIRLS OF THE 


beautiful windows like that, worked out his de- 
signs in water-colors on paper and afterward — 
when the great sheet of glass had been properly 
prepared — painted the window itself — oil-paint- 
ing, using metallic paints/' 

“ Is that how it’s done ? ” queried Olive. “ I 
love this library window. And I like to study 
the stained-glass windows in church, too — some- 
times I forget to say my prayers when I’m 
looking at them ! ” in merry penitence. 

“ I, too ! My father used to paint the saints’ 
and cherubs’ heads so beautifully, painting both 
sides of the glass, the figure in some dull tint, 
brown or grey, on the right side, to face the peo- 
ple and the brilliant, the illuminating colors, as 
he called them, upon the back, the other side of 
the sheet of glass, so’s to shine through,” look- 
ing up at the translucent rays streaming through 
the brown monkish figure. 

“Did you use to watch him while he was 
painting ? ” 

“ Occasionally I did, perched on a chair be- 
side his tall, oblong easel that had the glass 
upon it. . . . He let me when he could, 

because he had it all planned out that I— <- 
too ” 

The last words were very thin and low and 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 85 

broke off, their snapped thread being lost in the 
rich tangle of colors, ruby and gold, with other 
glories wonderfully interwoven, which bathed 
that corner of the room where the pictured 
medieval scribe sat poring over his written 
book. 

Olive moved a little uneasily. She felt un- 
comfortable when Jessica spoke of her father, 
because, having lost a mother herself, she un- 
derstood what bereavement meant, but to lose 
both parents, as the other girl had done, to have 
absolutely no nearer living relative than Cousin 
Anne, related to Jessica through her mother’s 
mother as she was to Olive through her father’s 
father ; that was terrible, indeed ! 

Therefore out of her fidgetings Olive evolved 
a remark which led away from the glorious 
window and stained glass in general. 

“ Do you know, I think that it was just too 
awfully good of you to spend all day yesterday 
sewing upon that white frock for little ’Becca, 
the dumb child,” she said with girlish gush. 

“ Oh I that was nothing ; I enjoyed doing 
it. Cousin Anne deserves more than half the 
praise ; ’twas she who bought the material ; I — 
I didn’t have the money I ” 

Jessica spoke rather absent-mindedly, her 


86 


GIRLS OF THE 


gaze still wavering between the ruby window- 
nook and Olive. 

“ What 1 ” breathed the latter. Oh, you 
poor dear! Jessica, Father never thought of 
it, Fm sure, but Fm going to drop a hint to 
him, this very day, that he might make you a 
monthly allowance for pocket-money, now that 
you’ve come to live with us for a year or two, 
just as he does with Sybil and me. Oh-h 1 you 
wouldn’t like it, eh ? ” in crestfallen echo. 

Olive!'' The Morning-Glory’s arms fell 
limply to her sides. Her skin, naturally clear 
and colorless as a pure white specimen of her 
name-flower, looked wan in the gold and crim- 
son shafts of light streaming from the stained 
window. “ Oh-h I Olive, I wouldn’t have you 
do that, hint anything — not for the world. Oh, 
don’t you think I feel it enough — that I ” 

The gusty words splashed through the first 
drops of a tear-fall so sudden that it seemed as 
if the rainbowed colors had begun to drip. 

A wet and crumpled-up Morning-Glory, all 
draggled upon its vine of girlish courage, 
dropped into a library chair, turning a stream- 
ing face to hide against the leather chair-back. 

“Oh, honey, I never — meant ” came 

brokenly from Olive. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 87 

I know — I know you never meant to be 
anything but lovely to me 1 ” sobbed the figure 
in the chair. “ But, oh ” — wildly weeping — ** if 
my father or my mother could have lived ! I 
know that your father, Olive — that Mr. Deer- 
in g — invited me to come here for this last year 
or so that Til be in high school, when he had 
never even seen me, simply because Cousin 
Anne was so worried about my having no- 
where — nowhere to go after Auntie (of course, 
she wasn’t really my auntie, only a friend of 
Mother’s who took me in after Mother died) 
sailed for China with her husband who’s a 
missionary. They didn’t think that China, the 
part that she’s going to, would be good for 
me 1 ” pathetically. 

‘^I’m sure it wouldn’t — pig-tails and Boxers 
and stuff ! ” wailed Olive helplessly, her face 
wet too, as if the window’s melting shafts of 
color dripped upon it. There, Jessica I There, 
Jess darling ; you know we all just love to have 
you with us I ” perching upon the arm of the li- 
brary chair, laying her beautiful dark head with 
the ringlet curl against the stricken brown one. 

The curl tickled Jessica’s neck ; impulsively 
she caught and kissed it, fondled it like a flower 
against her wet cheek. 


88 


GIRLS OF THE 


^*Yes, ev-er-ybody has been so good to me,” 
she gasped, reviving enough for heartfelt em- 
phasis. “You’ve shared things with me, Sybil 
and you; and Cousin Anne insists on giving 
me a little pocket-money from time to time, 
just as she gives me clothes — she’s so dear ! — 
and just as she’s insisting on paying my camp- 
board in that seashore camp, so that I may 
have the fun of going with the other girls to 
those beautiful Sugarloaf sand-dunes.” 

Sugarloaf ! Never did sugar-lump drop into 
a tart cup with more ameliorating sweetness 
than dropped that word, now, into the troubled 
waters pulsing to and fro between the girls’ 
hearts, although it breathed of brine, not sugar. 

Olive started, sat up straight upon the chair- 
arm. She had thought of more words to con- 
jure with, to win back joy or, at any rate, dis- 
tract from sorrow. 

“Jessica!” she said solemnly, “I’ve got a 
teeter-ladder in my brain. Ever since we visited 
the playground that day I’ve had a teeter-ladder 
in my head.” 

Jessica choked upon the next sob which mixed 
itself up with her startled breath. Her nose 
ceased burrowing in the leather nest of a chair- 
button. She sat up and turned her face round. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 89 

“ Oh I you needn’t stare at me ; I’m not 
going out of my mind ; I haven’t got a giant 
stride there, too,” laughingly. But the ladder 
keeps seesawing all the time ; it’s like a game 
of ‘Jenkins: Hands up I Hands down!’ One 
minute the ladder teeters down toward the 
Sugarloaf, and the hotel, that Father proposed 
our going to this summer, Sybil and I, is away 
up in the air, with the teacher of modern danc- 
ing from whom we’re to take lessons, crowing 
on top : Cock-a-doodle-doo 1 Tooraloo 1 Like 
that 1 

“ Next minute down with the hotel — up with 
the Sugarloaf and the Camp Fire Girls dancing 
the Leaf Dance among the white dunes I ” 

Olive had stars in the dreamy black of her 
eyes, now ; they were gazing far away. 

“ What on earth do you mean : not that 
you’re thinking of becoming a Camp Fire Girl 
— joining our Morning-Glory Camp Fire? Oh, 
you know how I’ve wanted you to do that, 
Olive I ” A little lightning-spurt of excitement 
flashed through Jessica’s tears. “Oh, Sugarloaf 
and sugarloons / ” she gasped, shaky laughter 
beginning to patter like crystal hail through 
the rain-drops, the end of the shower. “ Why, 
’twould just be sugar through and through 


90 GIRLS OF THE 

that camping trip if Sybil and you should come 
with us.” 

“ Fm not so sure of that,” Olive shook her 
head sagely. “ If I were to try my hand at the 
camp cooking, Fm afraid the effects would be 
bitter, not sweet,” with a grimace. “You know 
Father says that my cookery ought to be tried 
first on the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals before any member of the 
animal kingdom should be allowed to partake 
of it ! ” Here, even the satiny ringlet curling 
down Olive’s white neck on to the shoulder of 
her white dress laughed — she clung to that 
black curl since she put her hair up, for good, 
six months before. 

“ I suppose that if Mother had lived I’d 
have learned to do a great many things that I 
don’t know much about now,” she went on 
softly. “Cook never wanted us in the kitchen ; 
so we stayed out of it. Cousin Anne says that 
Fm not a bit ‘ domestic.’ But sometimes ” — the 
dark eyes shone wistfully — “something just 
swells up so big in me that I feel as if I 
shall simply burst if I don’t get it out of my 
system I ” becoming, in turn, tragically confi- 
dential. “ I’ve tried working it off in the rhymes 
that Sybil laughs at ; I persuaded Father to let 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 91 

me take painting lessons outside of school- 
hours, but I don’t believe I’ll ever paint any- 
thing that a cow would care to look at,” laugh- 
ing ruefully, “ whatever you may do I Cook 
(you know she cooked for Father and Mother 
before I was born and she’s Irish) saw one of 
my pictures and I heard her say to herself: 
‘ Tear an’ ages 1 looks as if that old guinea-hen 
had got some paint on her claws and scratched 
on the paper.’ Truth and honor I that’s what 
she did say ! ” 

Jessica was now laughing spasmodically, the 
bright drops upon her eyelashes winking at the 
other girl’s gropings after self-expression. 

“All I can do, it seems to me, is, as I heard 
Captain Andy singing to himself last night 
during part of the Council Fire program, to : 

“ * Laugh a little and sing a little, 

And work a little and play a little, 

And fiddle a little and foot it a little, 

As bravely as I can ! ’ ” 

Olive laughingly footed it round the library, 
burlesquing her own limitations. “ And I don’t 
know whether I could even ‘ foot it ’ very far 
if it came to a tramp,” she said over her 
shoulder. “ Goodness I since Sybil and I have 
used the automobile so much, as Father drives 


92 


GIRLS OF THE 


himself in the smaller car, I don't even ‘ sing the 
song of feet ' except when I play tennis or go 
round the golf course with Dad. . . . Per- 

haps, if I joined the Camp Fire Girls, I might 
grow a few new wing-feathers, as Captain Andy 
wants his little niece to do — the niece that 
moons in an orchard and goes round with a 
pet pig and a duck for followers — she must be 
awfully * witchetty^ eh ? " 

“ I should think so ! " came from a now 
smiling Morning-Glory in the leather chair. 

“ Gracious ! there’s the luncheon bell and we 
must get through with the meal as quickly as 
we can if we’re to carry out your plan, Jess, of 
getting to the playground and dressing up 
little ’Becca before the teachers get back and 
the folk-dancing begins.” 

“ Oh ! I must run and bathe my face.” 
Jessica made for the library-door in a flurry. 
“ First — first, I want to hug you, Olive. And 
you won’t think, will you, that I’m not just too 
awfully grateful to you all for making me so — 
so happy here ? 

“ It was meddling with Papa’s old paint-box 
this morning that broke me all up,” added 
the seventeen-year-old girl to herself, dashing 
up the broad staircase which she had de- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 93 

scended a little while ago, to her own room. 
** That, and thinking of how I used sometimes 
to sit by him when he was painting a saint’s 
head on glass for some beautiful window I ” (A 
vigorous splash with a cold sponge.) “ Mother 
said he ran to Saints’ Heads!” (Splash and 
choke 1 ) And he used to say that I inherited 
his talent and love of color and that girls were 
taking up stained-glass work — window-paint- 
ing — now, making a success of it, too. I only 
wish / could I ” (Splash, splash, splash, and a 
girl forcing a dripping sponge into her mouth, 
to drown a returning sob, because she felt that 
it would not be “ game ” to depress with tears 
or the semblance of them the midday meal of 
those who had generously given her a home I) 
“ And, whatever comes, I’ve got to be as brave 
as my great-gran’daddy I ” she gasped the 
next minute, through her set teeth, glancing at 
a small table, on which, beside the disturbing 
paint-box, lay an old-fashioned, oval leather 
case, with a tarnished gold stripe round its 
edge. 

Towel in hand, Jessica impulsively sprang 
toward the table, touched a spring and dis- 
closed a small miniature, older still than the 
case, painted on ivory, set in gold, showing a 


94 


GIRLS OF THE 


face which, if the artist of ninety-odd years ago 
painted truly, was very like the Morning-Glory 
one now hanging over it : the same crest of 
light brown hair over the forehead, the same 
naturally laughing grey-blue eyes. ** My 
mother’s grandfather, Captain Josiah Dee, 
you were a very handsome young man when 
that miniature was painted, let me tell you I ” 
she gurgled, biting upon a corner of the dam- 
ask towel in a fighting attempt to regain com- 
posure by forcing her thoughts to dwell lightly 
for a jninute upon the manly shoulders in the 
blue coat with brass buttons and the high stock- 
collar under a dimpled chin — her own had a 
dimple like it ! “You have such a living smile ; 
you always seem to be alive and laughing at 
me when I feel blue I Well! You saved lots 
of lives when you commanded a big ship, but 
were drowned, yourself, at last. I must be as 
brave as you were! And, great- gran’ daddy 
dear, let me tell you, too. I’m not altogether 
alone, because I’ve got Cousin Anne and I’m 
a Camp Fire Girl — and Olive’s a dear ; wouldn’t 
she be a dream — just a Camp Fire Girl’s dream 
— In a ceremonial dress and beaded head-band, 
with her black hair in two long plaits and her 
dark eyes ? ” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 95 

The oval case shut with a click. 

Olive’s hair and eyes looked as dreamily 
beautiful in a simple white dress as they would 
have done in gold-brown khaki when, three- 
quarters of an hour later, she wended her way, 
together with four other girls, toward that poor 
and crowded quarter of the city of Clevedon 
whose tall factory chimneys enshrined the 
public playground — largely a garden of for- 
eign buds — whither their steps were bent. 

Yet not one of her companions envied that 
hair its raven lustre or the grace of the small 
head it crowned, for if they were not all four 
beauties, at least they were true daughters of 
Columbia who, fair herself, seldom or never 
hatches an ugly duckling. 

There was one point of envy among them, 
so far as Sally, Betty, and Arline were con- 
cerned — the glass buttons on Jessica’s blouse I 

“ Oh I those ‘ Wohelo ’ heart-shaped but- 
tons I” Sally’s eyes and the July sky-beams to- 
gether picked out the decorative W — she was 
sure it meant to be a W — within the blue heart 
of glass. “And that white blouse with the blue 
facings — it just brings out the color of your 
eyes, ‘ Glory,’ ” calling Jessica, the oldest of the 
quintette, by the name which, growing out of 


96 


GIRLS OF THE 


an incident, had clung to her in childhood, to 
blossom later into her Camp Fire title. 

Cousin Anne gave it to me on my birthday 
and my lavender smock frock, too ; I made the 
lavender Tam myself.”' The Morning-Glory 
was utterly smiling again, forgetting even the 
brass buttons on the coat of her great-grand- 
father, the only relative besides Cousin Anne 
who seemed to her, in a way, to live and pre- 
side over her girlhood, forgetting them and 
him in that j oiliest of youth’s experiences, to be 
abroad with a small band of admiring individu- 
als of its own age and sex. 

Looking back, mentally, she saw that seven- 
teenth birthday, separated from her only by a 
hand-span of fourteen days, standing in the 
way and smiling at her, not yet hidden by any 
curve in the highroad of life nor blotted out by 
any startling event. 

Looking forward, literally, she saw a different 
vision in ugly contrast to delicate smock and 
Wohelo blouse : a vision that at a distance sug- 
gested nothing so strongly as a bedizened 
magpie. 

“ Who’s that swinging on the garden gate ? ” 
burst forth Betty. 

“ Oh ! it’s that girl with the funny surname 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 97 

— ‘Tingle/ isn’t it — who entered high school 
last January.” The pretty shell-pink tints of 
Arline’s complexion — her strong point — deep- 
ened with disfavor as she looked ahead at the 
restless gate, one of a scattered row deco- 
rating one side of a raw new street whose 
lately erected dwellings faced depressingly 
upon vacant lots, piles of sand and earth, a 
wheelbarrow or two, and the gaping bones of 
skeleton houses. 

“Yes, and if ever there was a surname in- 
vented that rang true to life, it’s that one — so 
far as she’s concerned 1 ” Sally, throwing up her 
eyes, rose to a dramatic outburst. “ Penelope 
Tingle ! Just think of it! And she gives you 
the ‘tingles’ all over when you come within a 
yard of her. The ‘ Black and White Warbler ’ 
some of the high school boys who are inter- 
ested in bird-study call her, because her voice 
is so high an’ thin an’ wiry and her laugh like 
a hiss.” 

“Her clothes would set me tingling worse 
than her voice ; they talk to you before ever 
you get near her ! ” Olive’s nostrils quivered. 

“ Hush ! we’re almost upon her — and the 
white gate,” came from Jessica. 

“Hul-lo-a ! Hullo I Sal-ly,” The voice which 


98 


GIRLS OF THE 


rang out from that swinging gate as the quin- 
tette of girls ranged abreast of it had at this 
moment more of the stinging quality of a blue 
jay^s when it wakes one at sunrise than of any 
species of warbler ; the Tingle girFs clothing 
must partly have inspired the boys’ nickname : 
black and white of the loudest upright stripes 
upon the swinging skirt, black and white in 
brindled circles on the too visible expanse of 
stockings, enlivened by a wisp of a rose-colored 
girdle and an old-rose felt hat with a tarnished 
quill. 

These latter touches of color being a trifle 
faded had the dejected air of not being able to 
vie with the thick ruddiness of Penelope’s wrists 
which clung to the gate-bars and the florid hue 
of her plump cheeks. 

“Hullo-o, Sally! Is — is it ‘nobody home* 
this morning? Don’t you want to speak to 
me ? ” challenged the jay-like voice, as Penel- 
ope’s face hung outlDver the gate. 

At this the golden firefly in Sally’s eyes 
wheeled doubtfully, now toward that raw, new 
white gate, now toward Olive : Olive, whose 
father was a very important personage, indeed, 
and her father’s employer at the Works ; Olive, 
who had plainly inherited the flower of good 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 99 

breeding, nourished in the soil of wealth. And 
reading a contempt for Tingles and tingling 
voices in Olive’s face, little horse-loving Sally, 
who generally could be the best kind of a small 
sportswoman, figuratively gathered her gar- 
ments (neat and trim as when she was mounted, 
from her simple whip-cord skirt to her Camp 
Fire Girl’s knockabout hat) about her and, like 
the priest and Levite of old, passed by on the 
other side, leaving Penelope to her wounding 
manners and with a bruise in her heart. 

All of which means that she returned Penel- 
ope’s vociferous greeting with a stiff nod only 
suited to the inside of an ice-house I 

The Tingle girl ceased swinging as if petri- 
fied and stared after her ; then she burst into a 
high shriek of exasperated laughter and hailed 
a boy upon a vacant lot across the street. 

“ Hullo ! Rolie,’* she cried, “ do you know 
that there’s a frost this morning ; it froze hard 
here just now,” pointing her slangy sarcasm by 
a red forefinger leveled at Sally’s receding 
back. 

Ss-sh I you’re crazy,” expostulated the lad 
who wore a Boy Scout suit. 

“ If I’m ‘ crazy,’ you’re hazy — hazy in the 
brain ! He I He I He ! Hi I Ha I ” The retort 


lOO 


GIRLS OF THE 


and the shrill laughter followed the quintette of 
girls down the street. 

“ Isn’t she dreadful ? ” gasped fair little Betty 
who had named the Morning-Glory Camp Fire. 
“ I should think she is one big tingle ; hence- 
forth I’ll feel her a mile off ! ” 

“ Perfectly horrid ! ” acquiesced Olive. 

Sally’s under-lip suddenly quivered ; one of 
her lightning changes of mood breezed up in 
her, almost wafting her back toward the gate ; 
she felt the same twinge of penitence that oc- 
casionally nipped her for having once lightly 
denounced Olive and her sister Sybil as ‘‘ all 
fluff and stuff,” chiefly because, hitherto, they 
had taken little notice of her, when, now, she 
was forced to admit that Olive’s inner fabric was 
anything but unduly “ fluffy.” 

“Perhaps it’s not Penelope’s fault that she’s 
like that,” she put forward slowly. “ The Tingles 
haven’t been long in the city and they come to 
our church, so my mother went to call on Mrs. 
Tingle — she’s not the tingling sort at all ; she’s 
a very nice, refined woman — but isn’t it strange 
she has the very same affliction, in a way, as 
that deaf-and-dumb child whom we’re going to 
see now ? ” glancing at a white parcel under 
Jessica’s arm. “ She’s absolutely deaf, too. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE loi 


having lost her hearing after an illness, and is 
losing her speech, also, so that she has to write 
things down for callers. Mother said that she 
lacked the very sense that would enable her to 
correct Penelope^s manners. But the funny 
part of it is,*’ ran on Sally volubly, “ that she 
said Pen — Penny, as she calls her — was her 
right hand about the house, working so hard — 
since her father lost money lately — and manag- 
ing her young brothers so well.” 

“ Imagine it I There must be two Pennies, 
then, one of brass, the other of gold,” laughed 
Jessica. 

‘‘ Yes, when Mother told all that to the 
Guardian of our Camp Fire, Miss Dewey, she 
said it was too bad that Penelope shouldn’t 
have her hard duties touched up and made in- 
teresting by winning honor-beads for them and 
that she was going to invite her to join our 
Morning-Glory Camp Fire — there’s no Camp 
Fire circle at the church that Pen and I attend. 
Miss Dewey thinks that it would tone her down 
a lot to wear a ceremonial dress and sing stately 
songs, with mystic motions.” 

‘‘ Goodness ! you might as well try to make 
a parrot pray,” interjected Betty. 

I don’t know — now I ” This from the Rain- 


102 


GIRLS OF THE 


bow, Arline. “ Don’t you remember, Sally, how 
you and I felt about a year ago when we were 
just fifteen ” — with a great air of maturity — 
‘‘ we felt awkward and as if nobody loved us,” 
plaintively ; “ we didn’t know whether to put our 
hair up or not ; we felt too old to run and play 
with the boys as we used to do ” 

“ You won’t feel that way when you’re 
eighteen ; I’ll soon be young enough for it 
again,” put in Morning-Glory sagely. 

“ And yet we weren’t old enough to do as 
our older sisters and friends did, receive formal 
calls from boys and have them invite us very 
prettily to go to places I ” Thus the Rainbow 
again took up the chant of a fifteen-year-old 
girl’s problems, ending with this Jubilate : 
“’Twas then that ‘ Camp Fire’ came in so well, 
wasn’t it ? Since it took hold of us, six months 
ago, we’ve been just so busy doing new things, 
dressing up and winning honors, that we 
haven’t had time to think of ourselves at all. 
Maybe Penelope is at the awkward age, too, 
without any home help such as we had.” 

“ Maybe so ! Let’s drop the tingling penny 
now, anyway I ” suggested Betty with a chuckle. 
“Arline says she feels too old to race with 
boys as she used to do, but whether we run 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 103 

with them or not, we’ll run into them, I expect, 
when we go camping this summer, for Captain 
Andy says that there’s a Boy Scout Camp on 
some other sand-dunes, just across the river 
from the Sugarloaf, with harbdr seals and 
breakers an’ quicksands and all sorts of queer 
obstacles between them and us 1 

Too bad I Boys come in handy, sometimes, 
when you fish off the rocks with a pole and 
don’t want to handle the bait,” suggested Sally 
reflectively. 

‘‘ I hear that there will be two Boy Scout 
troops in that camp,” discoursed Betty again, 
** one from the neighborhood of this city and 
one from that wild tidal river an’ bay region 
where we’re going ; the Scoutmasters are 
cousins. Well I here we are at the play- 
ground now.” 

“ Tired, Olive ? ” Jessica linked her arm 
tenderly through Olive Deering’s ; that library 
scene had drawn them very close together. 

No-o,” answered Olive absent-mindedly, 
hardly hearing her own monosyllable because 
of the swish of that teeter-ladder of indecision 
in her brain, now seesawing at a gallop : “ If 
that tingling Penelope should join the Morning- 
Glory Camp Fire and go with these other girls 


104 


GIRLS OF THE 


to the camp on the Sugarloaf dunes, I sha’n’t ; 
Sybil and I will go to that big, beautiful hotel 
and simply amuse ourselves I ’’ So thought 
said. And so she left it, with the hotel swinging 
on high, a dizzy castle in the air. 

“ Oh ! here’s that funny little Jacob, who’s ‘ all 
de olds in de world,’ running to meet us,” cried 
Morning-Glory meanwhile. “ I hope we’ll find 
poor little silent ’Becca as easily ; ’twill be such 
fun to dress her up and ‘ make her over ’ before 
the teachers get back to the playground, after 
dinner, and the afternoon dancing begins!” 
hugging her tissue-paper parcel, containing the 
white frock in which every stitch had been set 
by her own patient fingers, together with the 
buckled shoes, Olive’s gift. 

Jacob of the raven locks seemed almost as 
much excited as when the horse bolted with the 
playground piano : his small brown fingers 
clutched the hem of his hanging blouse. 

“ Ha I we haf de big fire las’ night to our 
house,” he proclaimed. “ My babee ” — point- 
ing to the insect-like infant whom Sally had 
saved from being trampled by stopping the 
playground horse — “ my babee she get a match 
an’ de pape’ an’ she wipe dem on de wall an’ de 
fire come. An’ w’en de big mans w’at make de 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 105 

fire out shay : ‘ Who make dis fire ? ’ my babee 
she shay : ‘ Me ! Me I Me ! ’ 

“ What a depraved little ‘ firebug ’ — isn’t that 
the police word ? Sorry I saved her 1 ” ex- 
claimed Sally. 

Jessica did not linger for Jacob’s dramatic 
recital ; she was walking on over the broad 
public playground, past the Silver Twins and 
the flowering catalpa tree on the edge of whose 
island of shade she had called the Bluebird 
through a dumb child’s window, on toward the 
great, gleaming bathing- pool — that artificial 
sheet of shallow water — in an eager search for 
little ’Becca. 

By her side ran a self-constituted escort, a 
strange, foreign child whom she had not seen 
before, catching with elfin fingers at the silver 
bracelet, the Fire Maker’s bracelet, last night 
received, on Jessica’s wrist. 

“ Ach ! you haf de prit-ty br-racelet,” mur- 
mured the little foreigner’s guttural accents. 
“ I haf de br-racelet-te, too, to my home. I haf 
de gol’ necklace to my home. I haf de pink 
silk stocking ; I haf de blue silk stocking ” — 
thrusting forward, first, one thin leg, then the 
other, in coarse and faded cotton. “ I haf de 
lots of ice-cr-ream to my home 1 ” 


io6 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ Poor little thing ; she probably hasn’t got 
a single one of them I ” The Morning-Glory’s 
eyes were misty as she looked down upon the 
small braggart. 

“ Where are you going ? ” shrieked Jacob 
after her. 

“ To the moon I ” she answered absently, 
looking steadily ahead, searching the feathery 
edges of the wide bathing-pool in which some 
barelegged children were paddling for little 
’Becca in the out-at-toe shoes and coarse grey 
frock, in order to transform her into something 
like a stout fairy, before the folk-dancing should 
begin. 

“To de— moon ? Take me ! ” screamed Jacob, 
all agog for any excursion in such good com- 
pany. 

Was it from the moon — the now invisible 
Thunder Moon of July — or from the edge of 
some far planet of gloom that the sudden cry 
came, a cry with a note of menace in it, of sob- 
bing horror, of fear, wiping out Jacob’s childish 
plea from the face of the sunshine ? 

A cry in the guttural accents, the broken 
English that attacked the girls’ ears everywhere 
on this playground ! 

A cry that mocked the fragrance of the 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 107 


pyramidal catalpa blossoms and blanched the 
rainbowed fountain at the heart of the bathing- 
pool until it frowned like a specter ! 

“ ’Becca 1 ” gasped Jessica, flattening her soft 
parcel against her heaving breast. “ ^ Becca I 
She knew not why she said it. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE GREEN CROSS 


T he next minute she knew. 

The splashing cries which came from 
the feathered edges of the bathing- 
pool rushed toward her like a great water-wave 
tipped with foreign foam, about which there 
was nothing articulate until, presently, the 
spray of one clear shriek was tossed up : 
“ 'Becca I Rebecca I ” 

The Morning-Glory’s face was a very white 
flower now, all crumpled by fear, as was the 
flattened parcel she hugged, the parcel that was 
to have worked a metamorphosis. 

’Becca she — she go down, stay down, under 
de water. She haf eat de green apple — she 
sick — she down under de water — she not come 
up — eugh ! ” So the spray-like shriek spread 
itself out into a cloud of words as a little French 
girl of six or seven in a bathing-suit came flying, 
wild-eyed, toward the one tall figure she saw, 
the girl with shiny blue glass buttons on her 
blouse, who frantically hugged a small parcel. 
io8 


THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 109 

Where ? Where ? Show me where ! ” The 
figure dropped the parcel with a scream and 
seized the hand of the newsbearer. “ Show 
me where J ” 

Down into the feathery ripples — the tiny 
ripples that broke so gently upon their 
earthy rim as if protesting that their shallow 
innocence couldn’t do any harm — they went 
together, barelegged child and skirted girl 
who didn’t even wait to toss off a shoe. 

** ’Becca she canno’ speak — no’ cry, like me 
— ^jus’ ketch her ‘tummy’ an’ fall — no’ come 
up I” The raving child vivaciously illustrated 
her meaning by pounding with a wet left fist 
upon her own little rounded stomach, rather 
full of unripe apples, too. 

“Where? Where?” was all the girl could 
say. “ Drowning ! She must be drowning in 
two or three feet of water — lying on the bottom 
of the bathing-pool ! ” raged her thought, storm- 
ing like a thunderclap in her ears. 

The sheet-like pool was wide and wan, cover- 
ing half an acre, no depth of color anywhere, 
except where the brilliant afternoon sun created 
an island sunburst in the water around the 
fountain and where near the pool’s edge it 
showed topsy-turvy, moving pictures, pink and 


no 


GIRLS OF THE 


yellow, of children standing or promenading on 
their heads, as if in fear. 

Jessica’s agonized promenade was short and 
splashing. Now the water rose above her 
knees as she dragged herself and her clothing 
through it I Where ? Where f ” was still 
all her seemingly water-logged tongue could 
say. 

‘‘ I’ll t’ink some dere — dere she’ll go down, 
— ’Becca I ” answered, at last, the pluckily 
wading, little French child, who clung to her 
right hand, pointing to a rainbow-shaft from 
the fountain leveled downward, too, like an 
exploring finger. 

And there the rainbow and Jessica found her 
— at the burnished point to which she in her 
dumb play had waded forth through two feet 
and a half of water to catch that rainbow — 
lying all dressed in the old grey frock and 
broken footwear beneath the island sunburst 
of the fountain. 

Here the girl, looking down, saw a dark 
spot, a hair-fringed mound upon the pool’s 
bottom, barely covered by a glassy inch or 
two of ripples — head subme^'ged / 

With a choking cry she stooped and dragged 
it up, lifted it. She was strong and athletic for 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE iii 


her seventeen years, but her whole girlish frame- 
work rocked and shuddered, almost collapsed, 
as she did so, bowed by an unexpected gust of 
weight. 

The dumb child was eight years old, stout 
and chunky ; now, unconscious, clogged by 
the leaden weight of water in her little cloth- 
ing, swamped by green fruit, she would have 
made a taxing burden for a man. 

“ Father — Father in Heaven, give me strength 
— help me — strength to carry her out of the 
pool I Strength, Father— 

Half-aloud, irrepressibly, the cry that ever 
comes first in dire need rocked between the 
young girl’s parted, gasping lips — she rocking 
with it, to the roots, like a sapling in flood. 

The childish mound of weight and water 
sank again until it touched the glassy ripples, 
seeming as if it dragged her very flesh with it, 
while the French child, submerged to her wal- 
lowing armpits, moaned beside her. 

Then the round, strained arm that flashed 
with the silver of the Fire Maker’s bracelet, 
aided by its fellow, managed, somehow, to 
gather up that leaden weight again, to hold 
it above the thin sheet of water, to start with 
it, staggering toward the earthen bank. 


112 


GIRLS OF THE 


** Is she drowned — dead ? How long did she 
lie there? How far can I carry her?” The 
questions spun like a water- worked wheel in 
Jessica’s brain, grinding out each staggering 
step. Oh ! isn’t it horrible ? And we were 
going to dress her up I The frock I made her 1 
Green apples ! Cramp Oh, I’m let- 
ting her down ! It’s too much. I — c-can’t I ” 

The girl’s dizzy gaze swam before her to the 
bank. She saw the catalpa tree — a hundred 
miles off I She saw strange, steely shapes of 
playground apparatus on another continent, as 
it were. Dimly she beheld the forms of other 
girls, her companions, who had come with her, 
wading through the light, crisp feathers of water 
to her help. 

Then she saw something else. She heard a 
shout. Down the playground slope to the in- 
nocent looking pool’s edge, like an arrow 
launched from nowhere, tore a brown figure, 
coming at the rate of a hundred yards to a 
dozen seconds. 

It was a knightly figure, tall, slimly erect, with 
green and red stripes, together with many rich, 
quivering points of color flashing in an em- 
broidered jumble upon its right sleeve, the high- 
est color-point green that gleamed like an emer- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 113 

aid eye against a blood-red background as the 
flying water hit it. 

And where she wore the silver of rank upon 
her braceleted arm, tortured in a half-fainting 
effort to struggle onward with her dripping 
burden, it showed a kindred gleam of silver in 
the eagle drooping from a red, white, and blue 
ribbon on its left breast. 

“ Hang on, just a second ! Hold up — Fll take 
her F’ It seemed to be the American Eagle, dan- 
gling from the tricolored ribbon, that screamed 
the encouragement. 

Another second, and the arm that wore the 
Fire Maker’ s bracelet, typical of the fire at the 
heart that waters could not quench, had yielded 
its unconscious burden — swamping cargo of 
green apples and all — to that stronger right arm 
with the dancing specks of color upon the sleeve. 

‘‘ Do you know how long she’s been under 
water? One of the children just told me what 
was going on here ! ” panted the newcomer with 
the silver eagle on his breast as he laid poor lit- 
tle Rebecca, silent forever, as it seemed, face 
downward, upon the nearest patch of playground 
grass where the sunbeams mocked her wet, 
weed-like hair and the broken old shoes, as full 
of water, now, as she was herself. 


GIRLS OF THE 


1 14 

I don’t know how long she lay there — on the 
bottom of the pool.” Involuntarily Jessica 
pressed her left hand to her heart which was 
doing strange “ stunts,” while with her right she 
helped the tired French child to the bank. 

‘‘ And I don’t know whether there’s life in her 
still or not!” The lad in khaki had breath- 
lessly flung his broad, olive-green hat upon the 
grass and was stretching Rebecca’s limp arms 
out on either side of her head, not a quiver of 
which gave token that the torch of her dumb 
existence was still alight in some covert corner 
of her dripping body. He looked up at the 
other four girls, Jessica’s companions, who, wet 
about the ankles, were hovering, pale-faced, 
near. “ One or two of you had better run to 
the nearest pay-station and telephone for a doc- 
tor,” he gasped, “ if there isn’t a doctor’s office 
near. We may not be able to bring her to I It 
may take the pulmotor — I could use that if we 
had it. Turn her face a little to one side, so 
that she can get the air 1 ” This to his fellow- 
worker, Jessica, who obeyed, her breath hissing 
between her teeth in long, shivering, yearning 
gasps. 

“ Who’d ever have thought of any child 
drowning in that toy pool — two feet an’ a half 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 115 

of water at deepest?’’ groaned the lad as he 
knelt astride of the prostrate little figure, now 
looking haggard and horrified. 

“Two feet and a half of water — and green 
apples 1 ” Jessica corrected him. 

His hands were quickly finding the spaces 
between the rigid little limbs. Alternately he 
pressed with all the weight of his strong young 
shoulders upon them, then relaxed, setting up a 
bellows-like motion to expel the playground 
pool — as much of it as ’Becca had swallowed — 
from her air-passages and draw in fresh air. 

“Could you get at my watch in my vest 
pocket and time this ? ” 

Jessica obeyed. 

“Two of the girls have gone to find a doc- 
tor,” she said, glancing at the disappearing 
forms of Sally and Betty. “ Keep away ; we 
mustn’t get too near ” — this to the other two — 
“ we mustn’t take the air from her.” 

“ You know something about first aid then ; 
are you timing this work ? It ought to be about 
a dozen strokes to a minute.” The bestriding 
lad directed his question to the first rescuer — 
the girl-rescuer — by the motion of an eyelid, 
the while his strong hands, tanned to the color 
of his khaki uniform, rose and fell rhythmically 


Ii6 


GIRLS OF THE 


upon the framework of ’Becca^s dumb little 
heart, he trying so hard to breathe for her 
through those brown hands, to force artificial 
respiration. 

The silver swooping eagle above his heaving 
heart shook and palpitated with his efforts. 

A redness grew under his eyes, as under 
Jessica’s, where horror and anxiety laid their 
congesting fingers. 

But the many rich points of color upon his 
khaki sleeve, yellow, green, red, white, each 
of them a little embroidered design in silk, 
mingled their merits with the sunbeams which 
wove of them a rich arabesque that flashed 
and played beneath the most noticeable of the 
badges, the emerald eye against a blood-red 
background which shone, green as hope, when 
he took the little victim of the bathing-pool 
from Jessica’s arms. 

No peering eye, indeed, this merit badge, 
but the green cross of the first aid, awarded 
for proficiency in succor, hopeful still upon its 
red ground, enclosed in a green circle. 

Suddenly that verdant hope of which it spoke 
blossomed ! It thrilled and rioted through 
Jessica. 

** Oh 1 perhaps we sha’n’t need a doctor — or 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 117 

the pulmotor. I saw her eyelids quiver. She 
may not have been three minutes under water.’' 
The timing watch in the girl’s hand shook. 
“Keep off the other children, Olive— Arline — 
don’t let them get near, to draw the oxygen 
from her 1 ” 

Yes, slowly the breath of life was wavering 
back into its dumb tabernacle: through ’Bec- 
ca’s blue, swollen lips came a slow, uncertain 
shiver, drawn from the hands working upon 
her, a quivering gasp. 

“ Oh I can’t I rub her a little now, toward 
the heart — to start it up — I know just how ; I 
have a Red Cross diploma for first aid — I’m a 
Camp Fire Girl ! ” The sobbing, gurgling ex- 
clamation burst from Jessica; on the heels of 
the sob came a little whistling, thrush-like note 
like the beginning of a song, a song of succor. 

“Yes, I think you might — now — while I 
* piece in ’ her breathing.” 

“ Here, Olive, you hold the watch ; it isn’t 
so important to time the pressures any more ; 
she’s coming round — coming round all right ! ” 

With the timepiece upon her palm ticking 
little Rebecca’s life back, measuring the inter- 
vals between her reviving gasps, Olive stood 
and watched. 


Ii8 


GIRLS OF THE 


Golden lad I Dripping girl, a year his junior I 
Camp Fire Girl ! Eagle Scout ! Together they 
worked and rubbed. And life, kindly life, so 
reluctant to quit even a dumb tabernacle, an- 
swered their call, stealing upon slow wings of 
returning circulation through the silent child’s 
body. 

Suddenly the timepiece trembled in the hand 
that held it. That of which Olive had spoken 
in the library as swelling up so big in her at 
times ; the nameless tide of a young girl’s 
ideals, of her rapture at beauty, her adoration 
of the Father’s Presence she saw in it, her dim 
drawings toward service and hero-worship ; that 
impulsive tide rose so high in her now that it 
had to find a temporary outlet in the tears of 
agitation and relief stealing down her cheeks. 

Only a temporary one ! Olive had groped 
girlishly to find a channel of self-expression for 
that tide ; she had tried to let it ooze out of her 
in rhyming, to work it off in painting — or at- 
tempts thereat. 

But here she was quivering from head to foot 
with the sudden discovery that in the living 
picture before her, the prostrate child and those 
two kneeling figures upon the playground 
grass, there was something nobler than pen or 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 119 

paint-brush could depict, the highest form of 
self-expression. 

And her heart surging up within her vaguely 
named that picture, “ Succor.’* 

Succor was in the healing warmth of the 
sunlight that, now again, made its brightness 
felt. 

Succor seemed waving its wings among the 
branches of the near-by willow-tree that brooded 
over the scene — not one helpless wing, but two: 
the Will to help and the trained Ability to do it. 

Three hours later two girls sat one on each 
side of a cot in the children’s ward of a city 
hospital. Things had happened in the mean- 
time. A doctor had arrived in an automobile 
and after some gentle soundings and pound- 
ings of ’Becca’s anatomy to locate the undi- 
gested fruit that swamped her, had carried her 
off to the hospital, declaring that her after treat- 
ment was important. 

The after treatment she was receiving now 
was in the shape of a big waxen queen doll 
from Olive, a creature that could mechanically 
call upon its royal parents by the titles of 
“ Papa ” and ‘‘ Mamma,” as its little human 
owner couldn’t. 


120 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ It seemed too bad that she shouldn't have 
some present, seeing that we couldn't dress her 
up to-day — or for many days to come," re- 
marked Olive Deering, looking across at Jessica 
who was holding the dumb child’s stubby little 
fingers. “ I wish we knew the name of the Boy 
Scout who helped you to save her ! ” 

*‘'Twas / who helped him; he worked over 
her until he brought her to. He was an Eagle 
Scout, too, the highest rank among the Scouts." 

“Think of it ! ” 

“ All those little colored designs embroidered 
on his sleeve were his twenty-one merit 
badges." 

Silence for a few minutes while 'Becca’s right 
hand fondled the doll. 

“ Glory ! " In a low and thrilling voice 
Olive broke the stillness of the ward where 
most of the children slept, calling the other girl 
by the pet name of her childhood. “ Glory I 
the ladder has dipped once for all toward the 
Sugarloaf ; no, I don't mean that ; I mean that 
the Sugarloaf and Camp Morning-Glory and 
camping out with the girls of the Morning- 
Glory Camp Fire are all on top for me — and 
for Sybil, too, if I can make her ; the hotel is 
nowhere I ” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 121 


“ Do you really mean it, that you want to 
become a Camp Fire Girl at last ? ” 

“ I want to do something worth while I ” 
Olive’s lip quivered ; she spoke passionately. 

I want to do something with — with spice in it! 
I felt that, to-day, when I saw you working to 
bring ’Becca round — you and that boy. . . . 

I want to dance the Leaf Dance and, maybe, to 
inflict my rhymes on other girls without their 
laughing at me,” emotion dwindling down to 
laughter. 

“ But perhaps your father will wish you to 
go to that hotel, Sybil and you, with Cousin 
Anne.” 

“ Father, no I He approves of the Camp Fire 
movement ; I’ve heard him say so. He thinks 
with Captain Andy ” — laughingly — that it's a 
pretty good incubator for the growth of new 
wing-feathers — unusual power to do things.” 

Or power to do unusual things, eh ? ” 

** Either will answer I I’m sure Cousin Anne 
would be delighted to get off on her own hook 
this summer, without any of us girls. And 
’twill be lots better for Sybil than going to an 
hotel and lording it over half-a-dozen boys, 
whose parents are staying there, and who wait 
on her all the time — fight over her, maybe, as 


122 THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 


two of them did, last year — because they think 
she’s fairylike and pretty.” There was a look 
of her beautiful mother in Olive’s eyes now. 

“ As for me, I’ve quite made up my mind ; 
I’m not going to lose my hoot through not 
using it, like that poor old straw-eyed owl,” 
wound up the Camp Fire recruit. “I don’t 
care ” — rising to a dramatic outburst — “ if there 
should be a dozen tingling Penelopes and half- 
a-dozen witchetty nieces of Captain Andy’s, each 
with a pig for a pupil, in the camp. I’ll — what 
is it you say — I’ll ‘cleave to my Camp Fire 
Sisters whenever, wherever I find them 1 ’ ” 

Half laughing, half crying, she stretched her 
hand across the cot. Jessica grasped it. The 
pledge of sisterhood was made and ratified 
upon the heart of a dumb child. 


CHAPTER VII 


MARY-JANE PEG 

M ARY-JANE peg was munching a 
green apple. Green apples had 
never swamped her. To her they 
were the prize and the poetry of existence. 

Other things were well enough in their way, 
such as a daily mess that had as many flavors 
in it as there were airs in a musical medley or 
scents in a pot-pourri, A succulent cabbage or 
young turnip weren’t bad. Indeed, so far as 
satisfying hunger went, all was grist that came 
to the mill of her astounding digestion, roots, 
leaves, land-turtle’s eggs found among potato 
rows, anything, everything went, from a lately 
hatched chicken killed by herself to an old shoe 
of her owner’s. 

But the real greens of life, that which lent to 
it a bitter-sweet rapture, were the hard windfall 
apples of July, shaken by the orchard breeze 
from a tree whose fruit would not ripen until 
fall ; she preferred them even to a red astra- 
123 


124 GIRLS OF THE 

chan, with the early bloom of maturity upon its 
cheek. 

“Ungh! Ung-ghI” muttered Mary-Jane, 
closing her white eyelashes until her little grey- 
green eye almost vanished into her head over 
which two quivering upright ears stood senti- 
nel. “ Ungh ! Ungh I ” That apple tasted 
uncommonly good. She nodded over it like 
a hungry child over his bread and milk when 
it exactly hits his taste. As its tart juices slid 
down her capacious throat she said a grunting 
grace to the universe and started upon a root- 
ing search for another. 

** Oh ! Mary-Jane Peg, how — how everlast- 
ingly happy you are I You haven’t a thing to 
worry you I ” 

As the envious human voice fell upon Mary- 
Jane’s now slanting ears, coming from the edge 
of a shabby, swaying hammock slung between 
two orchard trees, the muncher of green apples 
raised her head and, happening at that moment 
to be in the vicinity of that hammock, rubbed 
her white-haired side against a pair of small 
muslin knees drooping over its edge. “ Ungh 1 
Ungh!” she vouchsafed in a snort of semi-in- 
telligent sympathy. “ Ungh 1 Uit-ngh ! ” her 
conversation, except in some squealing emer- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 125 

gency, being monotonously limited to this mon- 
osyllable. 

‘‘ Oh, Mary-Jane I Oh, Mary-Jane Peg, I 
don’t want to die — to die before you do — I 
don’t want to die young ! ” 

It was a frankly doomed cry now ; had there 
been an executioner in waiting behind an 
orchard tree, had Mary-Jane Peg been the 
sheriff whose business it was to hurry a victim 
off to an untimely end, the voice could not 
have carried more pathetic conviction. 

“ Die / Lord ha’ mercy I who’s talking about 
dying? — not you, Kitty? You talking about 
‘stepping out’ at the advanced age of four- 
teen!” came a blusterous voice, suddenly 
breezing-up among the apple and cherry trees. 

The doomed one, the occupant of the ham- 
mock and owner of the muslin knees, dropped, 
startled, to her feet and whisked around like a 
shaken leaf, the orchard zephyr fluttering the 
hem of her green muslin frock, lengthened to 
suit her years, but falling shrunkenly short in 
that respect. 

“You don’t want to die^ eh?” challenged the 
breezy voice again in an orchard gust. “ You 
don’t want to die before that pampered pig 
that’s hazaracking round here, surfeiting her- 


126 


GIRLS OF THE 


self with windfall apples. Well I she’s sure to 
lie down an’ grunt her last, some time, if she 
don’t make tasty bacon first, but where’s the 
fun of sitting in a hammock, talking to her 
about it? That’s what I’d like to know I ” 

“She’ll never make bacon — although she 
may after I’m gone I ” This last was a plain- 
tive after-clap of thought ; the wearer of the 
muslin dress of shrunken green looked up with 
melting defiance into the face which upon a 
far-away city playground had reminded a Camp 
Fire Girl of “ sheltering flame.” 

It flamed protectively now all over the mass- 
ive features as its narrowed blue eyes from 
under their heavy, weather-beaten eyelids 
dropped a glance half of amusement, half of 
deep concern, that floated downward quite a 
distance like the petal of a flower to alight on 
the brown head of the little four-feet-seven 
figure in green. 

Yes, it was scarcely half an inch taller, that 
figure, than the buoyant little form of Betty 
Ayres, whose Camp Fire name was Psuti, the 
Holly, chosen from a book of symbols because 
the holly is “ gayest when other trees are bare.” 

There was a sort of grimness rather than 
gaiety about this other small girlish figure pal- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 127 

pitating under the orchard trees as if at its core 
there was a spike rather than an elastic spring, 
that steely spike being fairly well covered up 
by the rounded, childish form, whose curves 
were not quite as well-filled out as they ought 
to be, the curly brown hair and dimpling face 
— quite a shade paler than nature intended — 
and the mischievous brown eyes, more liquid 
than Sally’s, now amber pools of sunlight in 
which a tiny brown trout seemed perversely to 
leap, refusing to be caught. 

Captain Andy, looking down upon the brown 
head, made up his mind that, now or never, he 
would catch that little perverse troutlet which 
had been dodging him and everybody else for 
some months and extract the spiky hook about 
which it played in Kitty’s being ; in other 
words, that he would get at the grim core of 
secret fear, or whatever it might be, which, as 
he put it to himself, seemed to be eating the 
very heart out of the child. 

“ Come ! let’s sit down an’ talk a while ; I’m 
just full to the hatches with things I want to 
tell you, Kitty,” he said. That hammock 
looks too skittish to bear my weight ; let’s put 
for the seat under the cherry-tree there, the tree 
that you an’ I did some grafting on last 


128 


GIRLS OF THE 


spring,” indicating a bandaged trunk on which 
a surgical operation had been performed. 

Neat piece of vegetable surgery it was, too, 
grafting a slip from a tree bearing fine ox-heart 
cherries on to one bearing mighty poor bleed- 
ing-hearts, eh ? ” muttered the captain as he 
caught the hand of his little grandniece, Kitty 
Sill. “ Sounds some like a parable that ! ” 
under his breath. “ Maybe there’s the same 
ticklish job ahead o’ me, now, to graft some- 
thing on to this little bleeding heart,” glancing 
askance at Kitty’s face with its set lips in con- 
trast to the fluctuating dimples. “ But, first, to 
find out why it bleeds — and there I’ve got my 
work before me ! . . . Let’s see, what d’ye 

call that crunching pig that you swap secrets 
with, here, secrets you won’t tell your mother ?” 
he asked aloud. 

‘‘ Mary-Jane PegP Kitty linked the two first 
names, emphasizing the last like a surname. 
“ She won a prize at a fair ; she’s a pedigreed 
pig.” 

‘‘ Ungh I Ungh ! ” corroborated Mary-Jane, 
boastfully, rubbing herself against the captain’s 
legs as he seated himself with his grandniece. 

“ Avast there ! ” boomed Captain Andy. “ I 
haven’t got any prizes, nor yarns to swap 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 129 

with you, either,” applying the toe of his boot 
to the pink-shot side of the pedigreed pig. 

Don’t you — don’t you come hazaracking 
around me I ” 

Mary- Jane understood that raging word be- 
ginning with “ h ” as little as Kitty Sill did, and 
Kitty had never found it in a school dictionary 
yet, but, somehow, it always cowed her as it 
did the corkscrew-tailed pig ; Mary-Jane made 
off and Kitty felt constrained to answer some- 
thing when her great-uncle baldly put the ques- 
tion to her : “Now then, chicken, out with it ; 
what did you mean by talking ’bout dying — 
dying young, too, as if you meant it ? ” 

But the trout was not caught yet, nor the 
spiky hook extracted : Kitty opened her 
mouth, indeed, but this is what she coolly said, 
with a little, sly smile of mischief, kicking at a 
leg of the orchard bench with the heel of her 
swinging slipper : 

“ Well, I don’t know but what it would be 
better to die young than have the things that 
preacher said come true I ” with nonchalant in- 
differencCo 

“What did he say? Where did you hear 
him ? ” 

“ Two years ago at Ma’am Barrows’s house ; 


130 


GIRLS OF THE 


he had a meeting Sunday afternoon ; she said 
he was a revival preacher,” — the foot swinging 
vehemently — ‘‘ but most o’ the folks let on that 
they considered him a ‘ survival,’ or something 
like that.” 

“ What did he preach about ? ” 

“ Oh I I don’t take any stock in it now ; I 
did then ; he talked a whole lot about wrath an’ 
anger cornin’ in pailfuls on the earth— that’s 
what I understood him to say — and ’bout folks 
calling on the rocks to fall on them an’ hide ’em, 
so’s the hot wrath couldn’t strike.” 

“ And what did you do, little Kitty ? ” Cap- 
tain Andy was much interested, although he 
knew he had not got at the spiky secret yet. 

“ Me I ” Kitty raised her level brown eye- 
brows ; the dimples flashed. “ Me ! Why, I 
just came home, all tuckered out, and went 
down to the bottom of the orchard there and 
picked out that big, tall rock near the stream 
that has a bed of soft earth under it, an’ I 
thought that, if worst came to worst. I’d lie 
down and call on that rock to fall, for ’twas the 
earth that would, really, tumble on to me — an’ 
that wouldn’t hurt very much ! ” 

If only the preacher could have seen Kitty’s 
outwitting expression, her swinging shoe I 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 13 1 

Her granduncle stared at her a minute. 
Then the orchard rang with his gusty laugh. 

“ Great Kingdom ! if you ain't the sly-boots,” 
he blankly ejaculated. “ If you haven’t an eye 
to business, picking out a rock that’s bedded in 
good soft earth so’s the earth might smother, 
but not mangle you, cheating the anger of the 
Almighty I ” 

But Captain Andy’s laughter was a brief 
puff. It died summarily. He rose and paced 
the orchard, thrusting Mary-Jane out of the way 
with his meditative foot, his figure looming 
massively against the background of fruit-trees. 

Just as suddenly he sat down again and 
touched Kitty’s hand with a horny forefinger, 
his face at this moment a sheltering flame, in- 
deed, fed by an inner fire. 

“ Kitty child I listen to me,” he said. “ You 
ain’t so ready to tell me things, but I’m going 
to tell you something that I never told yet to a 
soul outside my wife — your gran’aunt, Kitty — 
who died more’n five years ago. Kitty, I’ve 
led a rough an’ racking life, take it all to- 
gether, with maybe more storm than shine in 
it — I’ve gone winter-fishing for years to the far- 
away ocean fishing-grounds an’ that’s about 
the hardest life a man can lead — an’ he’s sure 


132 


GIRLS OF THE 


to ask at times what’s the meaning of it all. 
Kitty, I don’t set up to know the meaning. 
But two or three times in my life, once when I 
was a boy of your age, again when I was a 
tossed seaman standing to the wheel o’ my 
vessel at twilight, something has come to me 
like a flash an’ I’ve seemed to see surer than 
sunlight the Power behind everything an’ — and 
it was the ‘ Big Good Thing,’ as somebody calls 
it. Fatherhood an’ Truth an’ Understanding — 
and it isn’t dropping rocks on anybody. Pretty 
often we roll ’em on to ourselves, though, or 
get on the rocks, whichever way you like to 
put it, by taking false bearings, by our mis- 
takes and the like. Now, little girl, don’t you 
go and make the big mistake of shutting up 
tighter’n a clam on any secret that’s troubling 
you — sharing it only with a pig ! 

Bless your heart ! ” went on the moved 
captain after an interval during which tears had 
begun to steal down his grandniece’s cheeks. 
“Why, bless your heart, dearie. Death and I 
ain’t strangers. I’ve seen him and his shadow 
often enough to know him pretty well, an’ two- 
thirds of the time I’ve ousted him, too, when he 
was just setting up a claim.” Something 
superb stirred in the speaker’s tones at memory 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 133 

of the lives he had saved. “ An’, maybe, if he 
was casting an eye on you at all — else why 
should you talk about ‘ dying young ’ — I might 
be able to drive him off again.” 

It — ’twas what Aunt Hannah said,” began 
Kitty weakly, no longer perverse. “She said 
it to Aunt Kate, sitting on this very seat under 
the cherry-tree, only last spring. I ” — with a 
stifled sob — “ was playing round with Mary- 
Jane and my little topknot duck ; she thought 
I didn’t hear.” 

“ Great Neptune, I’d as lief be with Davy 
Jones as to live with that woman’s scare- 
crow tongue ; she’s always ridden by a night- 
mare or a day mare or something.” Captain 
Andy sprang to his feet again with nautical 
restlessness, but he did not pace the orchard ; 
he stood glaring down in a half-savage, half- 
tender way on Kitty. 

“ What did she say — what scare was she 
passing on to somebody then? Now, out with 
it — no bushwhacking — no beatin’ about the 
bush — you can’t get by me, you know 1 ” 

Kitty rubbed the back of a freckled little 
hand against her right eye and her right 
dimple blossomed forth ; already she was feel- 
ing better, deriving a comfort which neither 


134 


GIRLS OF THE 


Mary-Jane nor the topknot duck nor any other 
member of her animal kingdom could impart ; 
if this heroic granduncle of hers would rather 
depart this life with Davy Jones (the fabulous 
gentleman who summons sailors when death 
claims them at last) than to live with the 
tongue and the scares of Mrs. Hannah Beals, 
her aunt by marriage, then, perhaps, there 
wasn’t much in the spiky scare which the said 
Aunt Hannah had planted in her heart three 
months earlier. 

“ She said I was the livin’ image of my Aunt 
Lottie, father’s sister, who died when she was 
less than seventeen,” returned Kitty sedately. 
“ Then Aunt Kate said she thought I looked a 
little peaked and thin — that I ought to go 
round more with girls of my own age.” 

“ So you ought I An’ that’s what I’m going 
to talk to you about presently,” put in the 
listener. '‘Weill an’ did Aunt Hannah drive 
the nightmare then ? ” laughingly. 

” She said that she didn’t see as ’twould do 
much good for me to go round more with girls 
an’ boys, go to their parties an’ such-like, be- 
cause I was so like my Aunt Lottie in looks and 
ways that it seemed borne in on her — that’s 
what she said — that I’d start a cough one o’ 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 135 

these fine days, not far off, and go as Aunt 
Lottie did ; an’ that I was looking more like it 
every day, getting thinner” — sniff — Kitty wiped 
away a tear. 

“ Gosh 1 I wish I had the keelhauling of that 
woman ; she’d go down under a vessel’s keel 
an’ she’d never come up again ! Now, Kitty 
child, listen to me ! ” Captain Andy touched 
the child’s shoulder. “And take it from me as 
straight that you’re like your Aunt Lottie ” — 
Kitty sniffed forlornly again — “ and you’re not 
like her ; she was a grain taller an’ a bit nar- 
rower in the chest than you are,” critically eye- 
ing the small green figure in the shrunken 
muslin dress. “ But, even with that handicap, 
she wouldn’t have faded away before she was 
seventeen — not a bit of it — if she’d got it fast 
in her head, like those Camp Fire Girls who 
are in one of my camps over on the Sugarloaf 
sand-dunes, that to ‘ Hold on to Health ’ comes 
pretty near being the strongest point in the 
law of life. 

“ She was ambitious about her studies ; she 
had her heart set on going to college ; it was, 
with her, come home from high school, peck 
at her dinner, then out into this orchard, not to 
swap gossip with a pig an’ a crested duck, but 


136 


GIRLS OF THE 


to sit in a hammock with a study-book, or if 
’twas winter, she’d be half the afternoon poring 
over that book or another, in her own little 
bedroom, maybe, and come down, weazened 
an’ blue-nosed ” — sadly — “ to peck like a bird 
at her supper. I told her mother that Lottie 
was going ahead on that tack under more sail 
than she could carry. ‘ Take her out o’ school,’ 
I said ; * turn her loose in the woods. I’ll teach 
her to swim an’ dive until she’s as much at 
home in the water as a young harbor-seal and 
has the appetite of a shark I ’ . . . Land I 

there’s a fine bathing-beach half-a-mile from 
this orchard, but she couldn’t swim any farther 
than that pedigreed pig there, ’bout the only 
animal that can’t hold its own in the water. 
Can you ? Can you swim farther than Mary- 
Jane Peg ? ” He frowned fiercely on Kitty. 

“Ye-es — with water-wings,” she faltered, “I 
can swim ten yards.” 

‘“Ten yards I Water-wings!’ Gumph 1 An’ 
you of my breed I That’s the way with about 
half the boys an’ girls on this cape, of sea- 
faring stock, too I Can’t swim a stroke until 
some summer visitor who spends nine-tenths o’ 
the year away from the ocean takes pity on 
’em and teaches ’em — then they’ll hand his 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 137 

name down to their children as a water-god 
who had Neptune ‘skun a mile.’” Honk I 
Captain Andy’s angry laughter scaled the 
bandaged tree. 

“ But to come back to Lottie I ” He reseated 
himself mournfully. “ Well, p’raps her mother 
would have hearkened to my advice, but the 
child herself was set against it, an’ nobody said 
her nay. She graduated from high school at 
sixteen with tall honors — an’ a face the color of 
sea-foam. The following winter she over- 
worked at college, studied about every minute 
when she wasn’t waiting on table to win her 
way through, broke down, came home with a 
cough that turned to a galloping consumption 
or something o’ the sort — they buried her in 
the spring.” 

Kitty drew a long sob-like breath. 

“Well now, you ha’ n’t got the over-study 
fever, but you’ve anchored in this orchard too 
long, with a pig an’ a duck for crew, fishing up 
scares. It’s ‘ Up anchor ! ’ now ; you’re going 
to be ready for me to-morrow when I come 
for you in my power-boat — I’ve been talking 
to your mother about it already — an’ you’ll 
spend a couple o’ weeks, at any rate, in one 
or other of those camps on the white Sugarloaf 


138 


GIRLS OF THE 


Peninsula, either among the Camp Fire Girls 
or sleeping in my big tent if you prefer it. 
You’ll do things ’long with other girls (that 
Mary-Jane she’s a mighty intelligent pig, but 
a silent partner), you’ll slide down sand-hills, 
watch the seals, learn to swim, breast-stroke, 
crawl-stroke ” 

“ I won’t do it I ” That little brown trout, a 
minnow of perversity, leaped again in the 
amber pool of Kitty’s eyes. 

But the flying-dolphin-like gleam in Cap- 
tain Andy’s swallowed it up at a gulp. 

“ Oh, tut, tut ! Avast there ! What I say 
goesy this trip I ” The granduncle stamped 
his foot on the orchard buttercups just as 
he had many a time stamped it at Death 
upon a reeking deck which the seas were 
pounding like an earthquake, bidding that grim 
spectre begone ; so he was bent on driving off 
his shadow now. 

“They — they’d only laugh at me, those 
Camp Fire Girls ; they wear short skirts or 
bloomers an’ middy blouses — I’ve seen a tribe 
of them before — an’ they dress up grandly at 
ceremonial meetings ; I have only frocks like 
these ; an’ they’d laugh at me for chumming 
with a pig an’ a duck an’ some hens.” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 139 

“ I’ll warrant they wouldn’t. They’d give 
you a colored honor-bead, instead, to string on 
a leather thong round your neck — that is if you 
joined them — for knowing so much about a 
farmyard. As for the Camp Fire duds, I’ll see 
that you have ’em when you need ’em. Bless 
your heart, little Kitty, you won’t know your- 
self in green bloomers — any more’n a vessel 
seems to know herself when she gets her first 
suit o’ sails on and feels herself moving; all 
your fears’ll run to hide an’ laugh at you out o’ 
the knees of those bloomers. An’ you’ll laugh 
back at the fears once you join the Morning- 
Glory Camp Fire.” 

** Is that what they call it ? ” A dawn-pink 
stole into Kitty’s cheeks. 

“Sure. And they call the biggest o’ my 
camps that they roost in at night, twelve of ’em 
— not all the tribe could come — Camp Morning- 
Glory. Sounds slick, doesn’t it ? Sounds as if 
they had hit the sun’s trail, doesn’t it? And, 
by gracious ! they have. They’re a light- 
hearted tribe, always ‘on deck,’ always alert 
an’ doing something, swimming or rowing, 
dressing up in Indian toggery, singing, sliding, 
cooking — middling good cookery, too — I’ve 
tasted it — laundering their own blouses, even 


140 


GIRLS OF THE 


one or two rich girls among ’em, whose father 
could charter a laundry for the whole outfit an’ 
not miss it — ‘ glorifying work,’ they call it ! ” 

“ But — I don’t want to go.” Perversity’s last 
stand I 

“ Ah, but hearken a minute ; do you know 
what I’m going to do when I get back to the 
Sugarloaf this afternoon? I’m going to prowl 
about the white sand-dunes until I find a nice 
hard chunk o’ birch- wood — there’s all sorts o’ 
driftage among those dunes, even to planks and 
great big logs washed down from Maine lum- 
ber camps an’ trundled ashore there — what 
d’you suppose I want that birch-chunk for?” 

Kitty’s eyes widened. 

“I’m going to make a top of it — a guessing- 
top, to spin on a flat stone — about a foot long 
that top’s to be, nine inches in circumference 
near the point, thirty at the head-end ; ’twill 
be painted with symbols an’ it’s called by an 
Indian name ^ Kullib'igan' It’s a magic top; 
it tells fortunes.” 

“ Non-sense ! ” 

“You wait and see! ’Twas the Morning- 
Glory who thought of that game; she’s the 
prettiest little dancer and her name is Jessica, 
the sort of girl ” — Captain Andy looked at 



“An’ you’ll laugh back at the fears, once you join the 
Morning-Glory Camp Fire.’’ — Page 139. 



• > ^ 

I 

4 










MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 141 

some old-farm buildings beyond the orchard 
and drew his comparison, now, from the farm, 
not the foam — “ the sort of girl who if she was 
run through a milk separator would come out 
all cream ! From what I gather she’s pretty 
much alone in the world, too, has her own way 
to make ; that don’t down her ; she’s a Morn- 
ing-Glory in spite of it — that’s her Camp Fire 
name.” 

“ How did she learn about the Indian top ? ” 

** Why ! she learned of it from a professor 
who watched the Indian maidens play the 
Kullibigan spinner game in their own camps 
or on their reservations. They ask it a ques- 
tion about who’s going to marry first or that 
sort of thing, sitting round in a scattered ring, 
and the one toward whom the big painted 
top falls after it has spun itself dizzy, why, 
it has pitched on her for the answer to the 
question.” 

“Something like playing ‘This year, next 
year, some time, never,’ with a holly leaf ! ” 

“ Hum-m I You see you might ask that 
Kullibigan guessing-top which of you were go- 
ing to die young — you sitting round among the 
Camp Fire Girls — an’ it mightn’t topple your 
way at all.” 


142 THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 


The Doomed One crowed triumphantly ; 
Kullibigan had sent the orchard spectre that 
stalked her scampering, when Mary-Jane Peg 
had failed to root him out. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE SUGARLOAF 

** It’s a long way to shore now, 

It’s a long way to go ! ” 

S O sang a laughing voice to the blossom- 
ing wave that was barely two inches 
below the singePs lips ! 

So full of frolic was that voice chanting amid 
the foam, as the white-flowering waves broke 
about a girl-swimmer, that it would be hard for 
an onlooker to believe that those tidal waves, 
themselves, were not sentient sharers of her joy. 

It’s a long way to shore now, 

It’s a long way to go. 

It’s a long way to shore now. 

To the dearest girls I know ! 

Good-by, Morning-Glory ! 

Farewell, Betty, fair ! 

It’s a long — long — way to yonder 
shore now. 

But my heart’s right there I ” 

improvised Sally again, breasting a foam-hill 
through the watery transparency of which her 
bare arms laughed — no other word could so 

143 


144 


GIRLS OF THE 


well express their exuberant motions — while her 
shoulders in the blue bathing-suit, with a flame- 
colored emblem on the breast, held a mimic 
boxing-match with the waves and her head in 
its red silk turban nodded saucily to her 
“ heart ” — or its reflection — upon ** yonder 
shore,” some sixty yards away. 

“ She swims like a fish, that Sesooa one — 
thafs her Camp Fire name,” commented Cap- 
tain Andy as he wended his way along a white 
beach, bordered on one side by the incoming 
surge of a tidal river, on the other by a snowy 
rampart of sand-hills plumed with vegetation. 

His remark was directed to a shrinking little 
figure by his side in a ‘‘lengthened” muslin 
dress, brown-dotted, now, and a wide leghorn 
hat, too childish for her years, with broad 
streamers of laundered white ribbon hanging 
down her back. 

“ They’re strong on names, those Camp Fire 
Girls,” remarked the florid seaman, encourag- 
ingly making conversation, as the small foot- 
steps beside him flagged. “ I’m blessed if they 
didn’t go to work an’ hunt up one — an Indian 
name with a meaning — for me. It had only 
twenty-two letters to it.” 

“ What did it mean ? ” questioned Kitty, 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 145 

shyly, as her granduncle paused to watch the 
frolicking figure amid the foam-hills with the 
flaming symbol of crossed logs upon her breast 
— signifying that among the Camp Fire Girls 
she held the rank of Wood Gatherer — and 
other girlish figures bathing, diving or swim- 
ming near her. 

‘‘ Mean I It was taken from the Ojibway 
language and it meant something like ‘ Wind- 
in-the-trees-Man ! ’ They said my voice, or 
my roar, was like that. But I up an’ said that 
the name was too long — a comber — knocked 
me over like a big wave — d’ye understand ? 
And that I objected to being called a ‘Big 
Wind,’ anyhow I Then they handed me out 
another just for fun, to keep up the atmosphere 
of the camp, as they said.” 

“And what’s that one?” asked Kitty Sill, 
her brown eyes feasting themselves upon the 
water-pommeled figures of girls about her own 
age. 

“ Let’s see now ! . Can I remember it ? 
Something like Men-o-ki-ga-bo ; yes, I guess 
that’s it ! ” 

“ An’ what on earth does that mean ?” 

“ ‘ Standing Tall ! ’ Ain’t that a bully 
name ? ” The mariner reared his massive bulk 


146 


GIRLS OF THE 


with a highly amused twinkle in his eye which 
surveyed the bathers, too. “ Fancy me play- 
acting with Indian names at my age, when Fm 
cruising toward seventy I But it pleases them 
an’ don’t hurt me. The Morning-Glory chose 
the latter name, the girl I was speaking to you 
about yesterday. There she goes, diving nigh 
on fifteen feet off that high rock ; she dives as 
well as dances like a foam-chicken 1 You stick 
to her like a limpet, little Kitty, if you’re shy- 
like among the strange girls, and I’ll warrant 
you’ll soon feel at home ! But I guess you will 
with any of them ; they’re a kind-hearted tribe.” 

“ Tell me some more of their dressing-up 
names ! ” Kitty shook her laundered ribbons. 
The little brown troutlet leaped in the sunlight 
in her blinking eyes, but it was an eager, not a 
perverse, minnow now ; greedy for the bait of 
a new interest. 

“ Oh, tooraloo ! Ask me an easy one. Well, 
I guess I can make a hit at the name of that 
tall girl that’s toeing the water there on the 
edge of the beach, making up her mind to go 
in ; I wrote her Camp Fire name down because 
I considered it the best of the bunch.” Captain 
Andy took a penciled slip from his vest pocket. 
“ U-l-i-d-a-h-a-s-u I ” he spelled out slowly. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 147 

That’s a Penobscot Indian word cut down from 
one of fifteen letters and it means ' Peace ’ ; she 
wants to be a peacemaker, that girl, to do her 
bit now an’ when she grows up toward bring- 
ing peace everywhere. She has a dove in her 
head-band.” 

“Who’s the girl with the red cheeks — 
an’ ?” 

“ And the scream like a curlew ! Can’t tell 
you her dressing-up name, Kitty. But her or- 
dinary one is Penelope, with a kind of extraor- 
dinary surname : Tingle, an' gee ! she is one 
big tingle, was about as mild-mannered as a 
hurricane when she came here first, but she’s 
simmering down a little, by degrees. See that 
dark-haired girl who’s sitting on the steps of the 
biggest camp building — Camp Morning-Glory 
they call it ? ” The captain wheeled shoreward 
and looked toward a scattered trio of new 
camps, lightly built frame houses, in a curve of 
the white crescent beach. 

“ The one who has just come out of the 
water and taken the handkerchief off her 
head ? ” Kitty inquired. 

“ Yes, she’s one of the rich girls I spoke of. 
The first time I saw her she talked some frilly 
stuff about going to an hotel, she and her sister, 


148 


GIRLS OF THE 


an’ dancing all summer — something like that — 
now she foots it an’ sings with the rest of the 
girls and cooks an’ launders, and learns how to 
run a motor-boat and pull a good oar, too, an’ 
thinks it all a lark. Her father has millions, I 
guess, and wears a mite o’ pink ribbon on his 
coat that makes him look like a foreign d\-plo- 
mat — I heard him speechify after a public din- 
ner when I was in the city of Clevedon about 
three weeks ago.” 

“ What’s that for ? ” inquired Kitty’s laun- 
dered ribbons waving in the sea-breeze and 
taking the words froin her lips. 

“ The scrap o’ ribbon ! Why I to show that 
his ancestors did truly come over here on the 
Mayflower — as yours an’ mine did, Kitty, for 
the matter o’ that, on a bunchy old hooker 
called the Angel Gabriel. That girl’s name is 
Olive Deering ; her mother was a beautiful 
Southerner, so I understand, an’ the girl her- 
self is, as a seaman would say, A. I. in p’int of 
looks from her keel to her truck-head ! ” Cap- 
tain Andy chuckled. 

A slow swish of wings in the air ! A great 
bird rising majestically from the water’s edge 
where it had been feeding on fish at a point 
where the tidal ripples broke gently upon the 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 149 

white sands that gleamed through them like 
milkjn a crystal vase. 

Kitty turned eagerly to watch its flight 
toward the dunes, the white expanse of sand- 
hills, some of which were sand-snows right to 
the top that rose to two hundred feet, or there- 
abouts, above sea level ; others shone with the 
faint pink of delicate flesh owing to the shadow 
cast by the vegetation, the sparse grass that 
stood up like the scanty hair on a baby’s head. 

The deep hollows between the peaks were 
pink and purple with the riotous, blossoming 
beach-pea or emerald with low trees and shrubs, 
basswood, bitter-sweet, bayberry and barberry. 

One sand-valley held a crystal basin left by 
the tide where a score of sandpipers were 
bathing. 

Over all sailed the magnificent bird — great 
wings heavily flapping — like a grey slate against 
the sky, in length measuring about four feet 
from the tip of its six-inch beak to the end- 
feather of its insignificant tail, its little yellow 
eye slanting down sidelong on Kitty, which, of 
course, she could not see, its long neck grace- 
fully stretched. 

“ Know what bird that is ? ” asked her grand- 
uncle. 


GIRLS OF THE 


150 

“ Some sort of crane.” So the fluttering 
ribbon again made answer, playing with her 
reply. 

“ ‘ Crane ! ’ Balderdash ! It’s a great Blue 
Heron. See ’em pretty often round here I 
There were three of ’em standing in a row upon 
this beach at the very time that I landed my 
first boat-load of Camp Fire Girls here — looked 
just as if the birds were lined up on deck for a 
welcome.” 

“ How funny I ” cried Kitty, showing her 
dimples. 

Say I but it tickled the girls. The birds 
flew off, but slowly ; they seem to know the law 
protects ’em now. One of the girls, the very 
one we were talking about, got so excited that 
she came near upsetting the rowboat I was 
landing them in. She cried out that, when she 
was initiated, she was going to take the Blue 
Heron for her Camp Fire name because it had 
such a splendid spread o’ wings. I shouldn’t 
wonder if she first thought of becoming a Camp 
Fire Girl through seeing an old owl, with a 
goose’s head on his shoulders, that could 
neither fly nor hoot, had lost his natural powers 
through not using them.” 

“ Do the other girls call her the Blue Heron ? ” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 15 1 

“ They call her by the Indian word for it. 
You come along over now and we’ll ask her 
what that is ! ” Captain Andy began a strategic 
move forward in the direction of Camp Morn- 
ing-Glory. 

Kitty began a crab-like backward one. 

“ No-o I I don’t know any girls like her and 
her sister (isn’t that the sister sitting near her 
on the sands ?) — they’re too grand for me, eh ? ” 
Her dimples fluctuated tentatively. 

Grand ! Fiddlestick I Is it of the money 
or the Mayflower emblem you’re thinking, 
child ? Pshaw, Kitty kins ” — the captain let out 
his deep, droll laugh — “ I guess you can come 
near matching that last any day, with your old 
chimney built for five smokes I I’ve read the 
builder’s contract myself, dated 1718, for that 
big T-shaped chimney, to be * built of brick, for 
five smokes I ’ And by the red, brick breast of 
that old chimney your fathers an’ your fathers’ 
fathers, ever since, have tended the fire o’ love 
to God and man, that the Camp Fire Girls aim 
to tend. They’re patriotic, those girls ; they 
get honor-beads, so they tell me, for looking 
up their gran’ parents an’ great-gran’ parents 
— and their occupations ; all that went to the 
building up of this great country ; they’ll wel- 


GIRLS OF THE 


152 

come you and your Jive smokes with open 
arms.” 

It was a very smoky background for a pa- 
thetically shy little figure as Kitty advanced 
over the white sands toward the triple steps of 
the largest of the wooden camps, open at one side 
to the airs of heaven. But it needed no back- 
ing of ancestral smokes, that shrinking figure 
in the childish, flapping hat and dotted muslin. 

For Olive, still in her wet bathing-suit, with 
her dark hair hanging, loose and long, about 
her, saw the little stranger coming. 

The childish dress, rustic and old-fashioned, 
but dainty and demure, the pretty dimples, each 
nesting a freckle, the liquid, amber-brown eyes 
in which that tiny flashing minnow seemed to 
come and go with shy feeling — not sure of its 
owner’s reception — all these simply reached 
out and took Olive by the heart, bringing her 
to her feet in a jump, the water swishing in her 
bathing shoes. 

“ Why ! it’s Kitty y' she cried. ** Captain 
Andy’s Kitty I Oh, Kitty, we’re just so glad 
to see you ! We were dying for you to come!” 

No distant or smoky welcome this 1 Kitty 
flirted her wide, starched skirts as might a 
pleased bird its tail. The happy water rose to 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 153 

her eyes. She cast one far-away mental glance 
to Mary- Jane Peg and the orchard with its 
bandaged trees as she felt Olive’s wet arm 
about her shoulders. 

“ Oh ! I must kiss you,” said Olive Deering, 
“ although it’s too bad to wet you all up, Kitty. 
We’ve been watching for you all day, ever 
since Captain Andy told us he was going to 
fetch you here in his motor-boat. Captain 
Andy’s so good to us,” breathing biiny grati- 
tude ; “ he’s always on watch to see that we 
don’t go too far out when bathing, those of us 
who can’t swim very well yet.” 

“ Oh ! you’re coming on — you’re coming 
on ! ” encouraged the mariner, whose camp 
name was Menokigabo. 

“ And he has taught us a lot about rowing 
and steering, a little about sailing, too I ” 

“Can’t do much with a sailboat here; it’s 
too near the mouth of the river. Tide’s too 
tricky,” remarked the captain. “ That’s the bar 
where those curly breakers are, Kitty,” drop- 
ping his hand on his niece’s arm and whirling 
her round to face a white line of breakers about 
a mile down-river; beyond which flared the 
blue breadth of the comparatively open sea. 
“ That’s the sand-bar where river an’ bay meet. 


154 


GIRLS OF THE 


Pretty rough water there, breaking on the 
Neck — the sandy neck of those other sand- 
dunes on the opposite side of the river ! 
Mustn’t get carried down there in a boat, any 
of you girls! Quicksands^ tool The Neck is 
studdled with ’em.” 

“What does ‘studdled’ mean?” Olive’s 
briny lips blew the words like a pickled kiss 
into Kitty’s ear. 

“I don’t know. Search — me!” quiveringly. 

“ I wonder the Boy Scouts don’t get caught 
among the wicked quicksands, seeing that 
they’re camping somewhere among those other 
dunes.” It was Sybil Deering who spoke. 
Sybil was not yet a Camp Fire Girl, although 
her elder sister who was to spend two months 
in camp had already been initiated as a Wood 
Gatherer; Sybil felt that the occasional pres- 
ence of boys would add sauce to this crystal- 
line Sugarloaf on which she found herself. 

She had not been in bathing and she yawned 
in the hot sun as she sent her gaze sweeping 
over as much of that white Sugarloaf Peninsula 
as she could see, a hundred acres of sand-dunes 
taking their name from the highest peak, a 
pillar-like loaf of sand that sparkled like sugar- 
frosting in the hot sun. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 155 

‘‘ Oh, they know how to steer clear o’ the 
quicksands, I guess,” answered Captain Andy, 
answering on behalf of the Boy Scouts whose 
invisible camp was somewhere among the lesser 
sand-hills on the other side of the tidal river, 
here, nearly two miles across. “But quick- 
sands’ll fool you,” he went on meditatively. 
“ That’s why they’re so turrible dangerous ; 
they look just like the firm sand, seem like it, 
too, when you plant one foot on them, but bring 
up the other, bend your weight on it an’ im- 
mediately you’ll hear the water rushing in un- 
der you and you’ll begin to sink — an’ it’s the 
one thing next to impossible under Heaven to 
drag you out I ” 

“ How long does it take to — to sink out of 
sight?” asked Arline Champion — who had just 
come up out of the water rainbowed with brine 
— feeling awfully creepy. 

“ ’Bout five minutes. Get caught in one o’ 
those sand-traps, nobody ever knows what be- 
comes of you ! ” 

There was a pervading, unanimous shudder, 
gathering up into it all the little minor shivers 
of the wet bathers. 

“You’d better tell Jessica that,” volunteered 
little Betty Ayres from the edge of the dripping 


156 


GIRLS OF THE 


group. “ She goes out in the rowboat, alone, 
the most ; she might get swept down there — an’ 
stranded.” 

“ That reminds me, I saw the Morning-Glory, 
early to-day, doing a strange stunt; she was 
sitting under a rock with a sheet o’ something 
— dull glass it seemed like — on her knee, bend- 
ing over it. I thought she was looking at her- 
self in it an’ called to her, chaffing-like ! She 
jumped up and ran away. She seemed kind o’ 
vexed at being caught.” 

There was a general, wondering laugh, oust- 
ing the shudder, as one and another pair of girl- 
ish eyes sought the turbaned head of Morning- 
Glory, the foam-chicken, amid the waves. 

Olive spoke first when the puzzled mirth 
subsided. 

“ Come up here, little Kitty,” she said. “ Sit 
on the steps — I’m going to dress in a minute ; 
I’m just sunning myself — and tell us what you 
used to do on the farm where you live and in 
the orchard. How did you amuse yourself ? ” 

“ Mostly I played with the ducks an’ hens — 
an’ with Mary-Jane Peg,” replied Kitty’s lips 
and fluttering ribbons gravely. 

“Who is Mary-Jane Peg?” 

“ She’s a pig — a very nice pig.” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 157 

^‘Hel He! He! Hi! . . . Ha! Isn’t 

she too green for anything — the greenest little 
hayseed, greenest little guy— naming a pig like 
that?” 

No need to ask whence came the tingling 
titter ! Penelope had come up out of the water, 
too, Penelope of the swinging gate who, in view 
of her home handicaps and her sisterly service 
to younger brothers, had been invited by the 
Guardian of the Morning-Glory Camp Fire to 
join its circle and camp out, here, with its 
members. 

“ He ! He ! Ha-a-a ! ” rattled on Penny and, 
suddenly, in the midst of her stampeding laugh- 
ter became conscious of a chill, that her mirth 
and her remark, both, shot wild, skated like 
pebbles over a frozen surface, grated upon an 
icy silence. 

The chill suddenly started a fever. Desper- 
ately she ran down the white beach to hide her 
burning cheeks in the water. 

‘‘ I said she had the mild manners of a hurri- 
cane — a Caribbean Sea hurricane ! ” mumbled 
Captain Andy between puffs of laughter. “Her 
core is gusty, but it’s good. Well ! I must be 
off to hunt up a chunk o’ birch wood or some 
other hard wood to whittle it into a big top — 


158 


GIRLS OF THE 


otherwise you can’t play that Kullibigan guess- 
ing-game to-night. An’ Kitty wants to ask a 
question of that fortune-telling top, eh, Kitty ? ” 
He dropped a wink upon the Doomed One, 
whose conviction of early death was melting 
away, like snow in May, into the filmy, sunlight 
haze that hung over the sand-peaks of the 
Sugarloaf. “No I you stay here along with 
the other girls an’ get acquainted. I’ll be back 
soon.” 

But he was not thinking of his grandniece 
as he walked off to prowl among the dunes ; 
he was philosophizing about girlhood in gen- 
eral. “ Girls, even the best of ’em, are freak- 
ish. You can’t understand ’em,” he told his 
masculine old heart. “ They cut queer capers, 
sometimes, just like a vessel ! Now, what was 
the Morning-Glory one doing to-day, sitting 
an’ looking at herself in that pane o’ glass on 
her lap — an’ running off without a word as if I 
caught her, or came near catching her, in a 
crime ? Her eyes looked red, too, when next I 
met her. And there’s nothing to cry over in 
her looks ; she’s pretty as her name-flower. 
But ” — soliloquizing further to a silvery birch- 
log, part of the driftwood scattered everywhere 
among the dunes, as he notched it with his 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 159 

pocket-knife, to test its suitability for a spinner 
or guessing-top — “ but it’s hard for a girl like 
her to lose both parents before she’s seventeen, 
to have no regular home an’ no money, be de- 
pendent for a while on those who are no kin, as 
I believe’s the case ! ” 

Meditating thus upon the invisible storm 
and stress that might beset even a girl’s life set 
Captain Andy crooning about the actual storms 
amid which his life had been spent as he bore 
the birch-log to his watchman’s tent upon the 
beach, to saw off a foot of it for a revolving top. 

If howling winds and roaring seas 
Give proof of coming danger . . 

he sang, broke off and took up the song again 
on the farther side of a mumbled gap as he 
commenced his whittling : 

** When perils gather round 
All sense of danger’s drowned, 

We despise it to a man ! 

We sing a little and laugh a little 
And work a little an’ play a little 
And fiddle a little an’ foot it a little 
As bravely as we can ! 

As bravely as we can ! Yaho-o ! 


CHAPTER IX 

WOOD GATHERERS AMONG THE DUNES 

<< T ULLO I Maidens, have all the braves 

I 1 gone hunting ? ” Thus boomed 

Menokigabo, known before he en- 
tered upon this Sugarloaf life of glamor at the 
beck of a dozen Camp Fire Girls as Captain 
Andy and at the rooms of the Master Mar- 
iners’ Association as Captain Andrew Davis. 
“ All the braves gone a-hunting, eh ? ” 

“No braves around this camp except you, 
Capt’n Andy ! ” One or two of the answering 
voices sounded the least trifle disconsolate — or 
wistful. 

So far as supplying the male element went, 
Captain Andy was massive, but not a mass I 

His admiration, however, of the sunset picture 
upon the beach before him could hardly have 
been outdone by any male mass, juvenile or adult. 

“ My I but you Camp Fire Girls do make the 
world look ‘ gallus,’ ” he burst forth in sea- 
man’s phraseology. 

“ What does that mean ? ” Ten voices rose 
together in asking this question. 

i6o 


THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE i6i 


“ Royal-looking.” 

“ Oh ! goody ! he says we look royal ; we’re 
princesses, Indian princesses, for this evening.” 
Morning-Glory strutted along the flushed sands 
in all her fringed and beaded bravery of cere- 
monial attire, beaming like the purple and 
white morning-glory in her head-band as if she 
had never known a lonely moment. 

‘‘ But where are the bows an’ arrows, maid- 
ens ? Why ! you haven’t even got a harpoon 
among you, in case a school of blackfish should 
come in,” bantered Menokigabo, named for his 
stature “ Standing Tall,” named by the maid- 
ens, in jest, as they told him, so that he might 
fit in with the general atmosphere of their camp. 

We’ll bring the bows and arrows next time 
we come,” answered Gheezies, the Guardian of 
the Camp Fire tribe, with the yellow sun em- 
broidered on her bosom, this being the mean- 
ing of her name and her own particular symbol 
as it was the general emblem of all Camp Fire 
tribes. 

She was standing by a budding camp fire 
which had just begun to blossom in a nest of 
rocks upon the beach, eclipsed by the sun’s 
fading splendors. 

Scattered around her were her maidens, all 


i 62 


GIRLS OF THE 


in ceremonial dress, with their long braids 
hanging, head-bands gleaming, moccasined feet 
spurning the sands in an evening ecstasy of 
dressing up. Daughters of the Sun ! Chil- 
dren of Camp Morning-Glory ! What wonder 
that the old sea-dog said they made the world 
look “ royal.’^ 

“Hullo! see, Fve got the Kullibigan all 
ready.” He pointed to a foot-long top of 
spinning dimensions and silvery lustre in his 
hand. “ ’Tain’t painted yet, but I guess that 
won’t lessen the magic — ’twill answer all your 
questions by an’ by just as well.” 

“ Fm going to paint it all over with symbols 
to-morrow,” burst forth Jessica, touching the 
carefully polished wood. “I’m going to paint 
the emblem oi our Morning-Glory Camp Fire 
which is an ocean sunrise — the dawn coming 
up like a foam-chicken, as Captain Andy — I 
mean Menokigabo — says, and my own symbol, 
a morning-glory flower and all the symbols of 
my Camp Fire Sisters that I can crowd on to 
it.” 

“ Great guns I ’twill surely be ‘ some top ’ 
then,” ejaculated old “Standing Tall,” looming 
massive against the waning sunlight. “ Why 1 
Kittyr 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 163 

Some one had come sliding pell-mell down 
the nearest sand-peak and reaching him in a 
rush, flung her arms around him, or tried to. 
Well might he exclaim I 

Kitty, not in Indian dress, although her hair 
hung in two chestnut braids down her back ! 
But a Kitty in olive-green bloomers silvered 
with sand ! Kitty in a middy blouse too large 
for her — her sleeves rolled up — with the bright- 
est dancing eyes and a delicate pink flush bur- 
nishing the gold of the freckles on her cheeks ! 

‘‘ Don^t tell Mary -Jane Peg,” implored Kitty, 
quaintly, looking down at her bloomers ; “ she’d 
be shocked.” 

“ Oh, land ! ” The captain simply roared. 

“Sybil lent me these — wasn’t it good of 
her?” The Doomed One thrust forward one 
bloomered leg, into whose bagginess her or- 
chard scares had evidently run to hide and had 
lost themselves. “ Sally lent me the blouse,” 
glancing at her companion, in ceremonial dress, 
who had slid down the sand-hill with her, and 
whose arms were full of fuel gathered among 
the dunes, dead, silvery limbs of juniper, with 
driftwood and wreckwood. “ Oh, Uncle Andy, 
I’m having such a good time I I’ve made up 
my mind that I want to be a Camp Fire Girl ; 


164 


GIRLS OF THE 


you can order the dress an’ — an’ fixin’s for me 
any time you want to ! ” saucily. 

“ Good life ! can I ? You jumped to it pretty 
quickly, didn’t you ? ” as if he were addressing 
the dancing minnow in Kitty’s eyes. 

“It’s not surprising that she should swallow 
the new bait so quickly,” he muttered in an 
aside to the Guardian of the Camp Fire whose 
tender eyes rested upon this new recruit’s trans- 
formed face. “There are no children in the 
two families living nearest to her father’s old- 
fashioned farmhouse with the gambrel roof and 
T-shaped chimney. And those that she went 
to school with she didn’t take to — though she 
ought to have been forced to do so — these girls 
have made her take to them ; they’ve burned 
up her shyness, somehow.” 

“ Kitty is learning that ‘ it is the discovery 
of ourselves outside ourselves which makes us 
glad,’ ” quoted Gheezies the gracious Guardian, 
with the little feathery rings of grey hair, light 
as thistle-fluff among her dark locks, playing 
about her pearly head-band. “ She sees herself 
reflected in each one of these girls with whom 
she has come in contact under circumstances 
novel enough to open her eyes to the reflection 
and already she’s a new Kitty. Already she’s 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 165 

sharing the team spirit, the joy of doing things 
together ! ” looking down on the slender, 
withered arms of juniper which Kitty had been 
gathering, too, among the sand-hills and had 
flung down in her rush upon her great-uncle. 

Not one frowning face left a mote on that 
shining mirror of girlhood in which Kitty saw 
her own heart, its natural aims and desires, not 
Penelope’s even ; Penelope had been rather 
quiet ever since she hid her laugh, her grace- 
less tongue and flaming cheeks in the water. 

“ Fm going up among the dunes to gather 
some more wood,” she announced now. “ We 
haven’t nearly enough to make a good fire to 
cook our supper and have it burn on and on in 
a jolly Council Fire afterward,” looking at the 
wigwam-like heap of fuel already piled upon 
the sands. 

“ Lovely ! ” responded Olive, meaning the 
idea, not the setter-forth thereof, although 
Penelope looked a very different Pen from the 
gaudy tomboy of the gate ; no human hurricane 
could be a hurricane in ceremonial dress ; there 
was a poetry about the leather fringes, the soft 
hue of the brown khaki, the shimmering head- 
band and embroidered moccasins which chas- 
tened the commonness of Penny’s speech. 


i66 


GIRLS OF THE 


To-night her clothes did not “talk^^ to you 
afar off ; they thrilled you with a sense of some 
romance recovered which the world had lost 
a while. 

And no setting for them could have been 
more perfect than the white beach and sand- 
hills, gleaming like lesser Alps, of the Sugarloaf 
Peninsula, flushed pink by the sunset. 

“ Oh ! isn’t it all too beautiful ? ” breathed 
Olive who had a chord in her heart that vi- 
brated with a joy as of heaven to Nature’s 
beauty, as she linked her fringed arm through 
Penelope’s, feeling a twinge of regret for the 
silent rebuff which the latter’s rude tongue had 
brought upon her earlier in the day ; this feel- 
ing it was which prompted Olive to be her 
wood-gathering companion now, in collecting 
juniper and driftage from among the burnished 
dunes. 

She might have had a worse companion than 
Penelope, for the tingling Penny, though her 
junior, was much the better climber of the two, 
and it was toilsome work, ploughing up well- 
nigh perpendicular sand-peaks, sometimes, 
through a jungle of vegetation that snared 
one’s every step. 

“Don’t get into that thatch-grass, Cask!” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 167 

warned Penelope ; “I did the other day and 
was bitten by a thatch-spider ; it poisoned me 
something aw-ful ! ” 

Spiders I Thatch-spiders ! Ugh-h.” Olive 
shuddered at the rank dull-green thatch of one 
sand-hill, whose ungainliness seemed to have 
something in common with Penelope’s speech. 
“You don’t pronounce my Camp Fire name 
properly,” she said after a minute during which 
she had given the spider-breeding thatch-grass 
a wide berth. “You call me ‘Cask’: the a 
ought to be longer and softer in Kask ; that’s 
the Indian for Blue Heron, the Penobscot 
Indian.” 

“ I think it’s a star name. Cask,” murmured 
Penelope, giving the title exactly the same in- 
tonation as before. “And you’ve got your 
symbolic name nailed onto you all right, Olive, 
because you’ve already been initiated as a 
Wood Gatherer and taken rank among the 
Camp Fire Girls,” glancing at the fagot ring 
on Olive’s little finger. “ I haven’t ; I’m only 
on probation, although they don’t ‘stump’ 
from wearing the ceremonial dress and being 
called by the Indian name that I’ve chosen : 
Awatawessu ; that’s Penobscot, too.” 

The poetry of the name which even Pen’s 


i68 


GIRLS OF THE 


pronunciation could not mar was so at variance 
with Penelope’s slangy speech that the Blue 
Heron, poised on a white sand-peak, her 
fringed arms outspread in their loose sleeves, 
as if she were about to take wing through the 
joy-filled universe, had to laugh. 

“ Oh ! Penny, you’re too funny,” she said. 
“Yours is really a .y/^rname,” dreamily, “for 
it means ‘ a star,’ doesn’t it ? ” 

“Yes, getting down to bed-rock, as the boys 
say, it means ‘ A creature far above ! ’ ” Sud- 
denly the younger girl’s mood changed. Her 
moccasined foot kicked the fine sand into the air 
as if she were starting it off on a rainbowed 
quest to find the Star, her namesake, along a 
climbing trail where she knew she would find it 
hard to follow. “ A — Creature — Far — Above ! ” 
she repeated slowly. “I guess that’s what I 
need to be ! Since — since I’ve taken that 
name” — scarcely above a whisper — “I feel, 
somehow, low-down, because I’m always ‘ put- 
ting my foot in it ’ ; I did this morning, laugh- 
ing at that little orchard Kitty directly she 
got here. An’ I’m too slangy. Mother 
doesn’t hear me, you know, or she’d correct 
me. . . . And there’s so much to be done 

for the boys, where a girl has three brothers 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 169 

younger than herself, that it didn’t seem to 
matter how I spoke — or much what I wore — 
so long’s I could get things — done.” 

A silvery star peeping out as the sun de- 
clined, peering down at the sand-hills, saw her 
namesake’s eyes full of sore tears. 

Olive stared a minute. Then her arms went 
round Penelope. 

“ Oh ! you dear,” she gasped. Oh I you 
dear ! ” wetly, too. 

They had come out to gather dead juniper ; 
they found the living fire-wood, the magic fuel 
of deep sympathy, mutual girlish comprehen- 
sion. 

It doubled their joy in a minute or two. For 
Penelope’s pangs were evanescent. They 
danced in the snowy sand-valleys, gathering 
up the khaki skirts of their ceremonial dresses 
into puckered bags for their driftwood fagots 
-brine-whitened chunks, some of them easily 
splintered and rendered portable, which had 
been swept in by the garnering tide from many 
a distant shore — together with withered limbs 
of basswood and juniper, native to the dunes. 

They tried vainly to drag along in their train 
a very ancient captive, a bleached, branching 
cedar-stump, driftwood, too, which gleamed 


GIRLS OF THE 


170 

like a white marble monument amid the sands 
that had alternately covered and uncovered it 
for many hundreds of years. 

Olive scraped its surface with her Camp Fire 
Girl’s pocket-knife and was delighted that she 
could tell by the flesh-pink of the wood under- 
neath that it was cedar ; one of the first flights 
which Blue Heron had made about the camp 
into the fairy-land of unacquired knowledge 
was the learning from Captain Andy to tell one 
kind of wood from another, whether it was 
alive and growing or merely dead driftage. 

“ It makes one love trees all the more when 
you can tell how they differ in their wood as 
well as in their branches and leaves,” she mur- 
mured, now, as the girls wandered on, picking 
here a wild rose, there a lacy blossom of thor- 
oughwort or of the everlasting white — blos- 
soming spirit of these white dunes — which 
Olive stuck into her black braid of hair. 

“ Well, we’ve got about all the wood we 
want, now; don’t you think so?” suggested 
Penelope, at last. “ And it’s time we got back 
to the beach and our camp fire ; Sesooa and 
Miinkwdn, Sally and Arline, will be cooking 
supper ; they’re cooks to-day, you know ; 
they’re going to toast bacon on twigs and 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 171 

Arline has made a blackberry shortcake with 
those blackberries that we found yesterday in 
the woods up the river.” 

“ Here’s hoping that ’twill taste better than 
my apple-shortcake, which Captain Andy said 
was ‘ chunky ’ when I took a piece over to his 
tent ! But I’ll do better next time. See if I 
don’t ! ” laughed Blue Heron, dropping her 
fuel and flapping her winged sleeves as if for a 
new flight. “ Oh I Pen, I simply can’t go back 
— yet,” she quavered ; “ not if they begin sup- 
per without us. I don’t believe we’ll ever have 
another evening — another sunset — quite so 
lovely as this. I want to climb that tall peak 
and see the view ; I will, too, if I never taste 
another mouthful ! ” 

They capered up the lower, easy slope of the 
hill, fringes waving, just in that mood when 
feet would wither if they didn’t dance and the 
heart must burst if it couldn’t worship. 

“ Oh I how near it brings one to — to Things 
— like the altar rails at Confirmation,” whis- 
pered Olive, half to herself, her gasping breath 
a shrine for panting feeling when, with slower 
steps, she had mastered the summit of this 
hundred-feet snow-peak and looked down upon 
lesser dunes, creamily piled, sown with sunset 


172 


GIRLS OF THE 


roses, upon a crystalline hollow like a mimic 
glacier where fairies skated and away at the 
sundown glories crowning the snow-drift dunes 
of the opposite shore beyond the tidal river’s 
blue. 

There all heaven seemed let loose, the heaven 
that lives in color ; the elder girl’s soul was 
steeped in it ; with cords woven of every hue 
in the spectrum it linked each holy moment of 
her life and wove it into the present minute : 
again, across the gulf of a year, she felt the 
touch of consecrating hands upon her head, 
heard the prayer : ‘‘ Defend, oh. Lord, this Thy 
child with Thy Heavenly grace . . . ! ” 

It was no far-away Lord of grace and glory 
now ; the sunset made a highway to His Pres- 
ence. 

“ That she may daily increase in Thy Holy 
Spirit more and more . . . I ” 

What better translation of that than the 
Camp Fire spirit : the quest of beauty, truth, 
service, health, happiness, love ? 

Olive’s lips quivered as, with a loving, ex- 
panding desire for human contact, she again 
put an arm around Penelope. Penelope nestled 
close to her. They clung together upon the 
white apex of that peak, the apex of girlish 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 173 

feeling, in such a moment as should ever pre- 
vent outward differences from separating them 
again. 

Penelope stirred uneasily. “ Fve got the 
dune-fever,” she said. “ You set me going, 
Olive ! I just can’t go back to camp with our 
fagots until I climb that other peak, just beyond 
this one, to see how the sunset looks from there ! ” 

** All right I Let’s I ” responded Olive reck- 
lessly. “ Our Guardian or Captain Andy will 
be coming out to look for us, though ! Well ! 
it won’t take very long. We really will go 
back then. Oh I wait for me. Pen I ” as Penel- 
ope, scarlet of cheek, sturdy of foot, panting in 
breath, ploughed up that still farther peak, like 
a brown goat, her braids and fringes waving. 

Stay, Sweetheart, stay ! 

Stay, till I kefck thee ! ” 

panted Olive, as she neared the top, making 
the sand-dunes ring with the merry hail of an 
old song. 

Hey ding a ding a ding ! 

This ketching is a pretty thing ! ” 

'' Is it, though ? ” sarcastically inquired a 
voice. “I don't think it’s a ‘very pretty 
thing!’” in the sourest of masculine voices 


174 the morning-glory CAMP FIRE 

that ever planted a sting in a girlish paradise. 
“Oh, jiggarool I don’t think ‘ketching’s* 
pretty : Fm caught — an’ I don’t like it 1 ” 

Both girls jumped. The grumbling shout 
came from a sandy shoulder of the peak on 
which they were standing, a peak whose shoul- 
der-blade stood out, clad in dark, olive-green 
basswood. Was it a goblin voice? 

Beneath one glossy shrub showed a yellow- 
brown mound — a huddled, abject mound — a 
shade lighter in hue than their own ceremonial 
dresses. 

Under the waning gold of the sunset it looked 
jaundiced. Jaundiced, truly, yellow-green with 
despair, if tones suggest color, and surly — the 
surliest ever— was the renewed shout that came 
from it, flung up from the olive-green clump 
of basswood into the teeth of the girls, the lips 
that launched the grumble being hidden. 

“ Oh, guree ! ” so it sullenly ran. “ If that 
isn’t like girls ! If they must sing on a trail, 
why can’t they sing something sensible ! ‘ Retch- 
ing 1 ’ ‘ Sweetheart ! ’ Stuff to make a fellow 
sick — sicker’ n he is already ! Oh-h-h 1 Ouch ! ” 
The despondent groan in which the complaint 
ended seemed to rock the very sand-hill to its 
shifty foundations. 


CHAPTER X 


THE ASTRONOMER 

a -ip T’S a Boy ! Both girls burst forth simul- 

I taneously, explosively, with the discovery. 

The explosion was followed by an inar- 
ticulate rumble made up of mirth, that was 
one part trepidation at this boy’s very singular 
behavior, and of the gratification which variety 
always brings in its train, for in three weeks 
and three days of camping they had not seen 
a boy, saving at long range. 

One of Captain Andy’s wooden camps upon 
the Sugarloaf beach, flanking their own Camp 
Morning-Glory, was unoccupied. The other 
sheltered an elderly naturalist and his wife — 
young people there were none, outside of their 
own group. 

“ But what a fat boy ! ” Penelope’s gaze 
was measuring the padded breadth of the 
yellow-brown shoulders, hunched and bowed. 
“ Ever see such a fat thing in your life ? ” The 
hills rang with her giggle, half-hysterical now, 
for the sun was departing, shadows creeping 

175 


176 


GIRLS OF THE 


among the dunes ; she was not absolutely sure 
that this bloated yellowish back, persistently 
toward her, was human. 

Was it a swollen spectre of the Sugarloaf ? 

And while the girls stood clinging to each 
other in nervous indecision they became defi- 
nitely conscious of a distant, organ-like volume 
of sound coming from no point in sight ; they 
had heard it right along, but, knowing whence 
it boomed, paid no attention to it. It was the 
roar of the breakers at high tide, breaking upon 
the sand-bar, half a mile off, where the tidal 
river met the open bay, or sea. 

It sounded louder here than on the beach 
near their camp and the incessant, invisible 
sobbing added to the mystery enveloping that 
surly back. 

All of a sudden the Mystery turned plump 
around and addressed them. 

“For the love o’ Mike ! ” it burst forth irri- 
tably, “ why do you stand there staring ; why 
don’t you offer to do something for a fellow 
who’s a ‘ goner,’ eh ? ” 

“ Are you a ‘ goner ’ ? ” Penelope plucked up 
heart to ask ; the yellow-brown Mystery was 
presenting not a back, but a shoulder to her 
now, together with a short, thick neck, a double 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 177 


chin and the fat profile of a head, covered with 
clammy hair, which, inclining to one side like 
a bird’s, looked up at her sidelong. 

That slanting gaze became an amazed one 
presently ; the owner of the flesh-cushioned 
back, whether human or goblin, was evidently 
struck for a moment by the unique spectacle of 
two fringed and moccasined maidens, with their 
hair in long braids, head-bands on their fore- 
heads, colored beads upon their necks, looking 
down at him from under the waving wing of 
dusk, their pedestal a white sand-hill. 

But his interest in anything outside himself 
and his clump of basswood was evidently mo- 
mentary. 

“Of course I’m a goner^' he reaffirmed 
glumly. “ Can’t you see it to look at me ? ” 
in the tone of one whose plight exempts him 
from the civilities of life. “I’m just making 
my will.” 

He pointed with the dignity of a dying sage 
to a little grey book upon his knee and waved 
a stub of pencil. 

“ Gee ! he’s crazy,” ejaculated Penelope — 
and Olive was deaf to her slang now. 

“No, I’m not ‘crazy,’” came up from the 
basswood. “ I’m poisoned.” 


178 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ Poisoned ! With — what? ” It was Olive’s 
startled lips which put the question. 

“ Arsenate of lead.” 

Here was a thunderclap, indeed, which shook 
the sands under the girls’ feet ; neither of them 
knew much about poisons, but this sounded 
deadly. 

“ Yes, I guess I’m done for. If you can’t do 
anything for me, don’t stand staring down at 
me ! I want to make my will in peace.” The 
fat fingers which held the stubby pencil waved 
it solemnly and then began to write again in 
the little grey book which had a vivid colored 
picture on the cover. 

“ If I’m to go” — the youthful testator looked up 
with something like a sob of self-admiration — “ if 
I have to go, I want to die like a plucky — Scout,” 

“ Ho ! He’s a Boy Scout.” Penelope caught 
her breath. She squeezed Olive’s hand in a 
convulsive grip. She rose to tiptoe on the 
sand-peak. Something was rising up in Penel- 
ope, stretching itself like a body of fire within 
her own frame so that she felt it in every 
extremity of her actual body, something was 
queening it within her, the motherly impulse, 
the mothering impulse fed and fostered by the 
care of three younger brothers. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 179 

This fat Scout called himself a “goner.” His 
puffy cheeks looked pale, too, in the waning 
golden light ; so did the double chin bent over 
the pencil. 

But just so, a year ago, had her thirteen-year- 
old brother Jim moaned that he was a “ goner” 
when he fell fifteen feet from a tin roof that he 
was painting and broke his arm in three places. 

Jim’s father was away, his deaf mother could 
not hear the doctor’s requests — the doctor whom 
Pen hastily summoned ; it was Penelope, herself, 
not then fifteen, who had waited upon the sur- 
geon, furnished safety-pins, etc., while he ma- 
nipulated his ether bottle and bandages. 

It was Penelope who had shrunk into a corner 
and sobbed and prayed while Jim was taking 
the ether, but it was Penelope, too, who, when 
that surgeon needed further help, had stumbled 
forth from her corner, had bravely stretched 
herself on the bed beside Jim and held the ether 
pad to his nostrils and mouth, sticking to the 
task even when she felt her own senses reeling 
off into dizzy sickness. 

And it was Penelope, now, who tossed Olive’s 
arm which was around her away, as if it were 
a lifeless limb of juniper, who in another mo- 
ment was crouching by the clump of basswood, 


i8o 


GIRLS OF THE 


beside the boy who had made up his mind that 
he had to “ go ” and was scribbling his boyish 
bequests. 

Fiercely she grasped his arm in its khaki 
uniform and shook it I 

“Listen to mel Look at me I” she gasped. 
“ Where did you get the arsenic or lead or 
whatever it was ? ” 

“ Arsenate of lead 1 ” corrected the testator, 
mildly now. “ Dead-deadly poison — poisons 
you some if it only trickles over your body ! ” 

Penny’s cheeks lost a good deal of their color 
which ebbed away into a hard little island of red 
under each cheek-bone. 

“ Where did you get it ? ” she repeated. 

“ In the woods over there, beyond the creek, 
where the trees and the berries and the ground 
an’ all were sprayed with it.” 

“ Were you alone ? Was anybody with 
you ? ” 

“ Kenjo was. He’s another Scout. He’s 
gone off over the dunes to try an’ find a 
house, or camp, to get something to give me. 
But I guess it’s no use I ” with a deep gulp 
that in a girl would have been a collapsing 
sob. 

“ Mercy ! ” The fingers of Penelope’s left 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE i8i 


hand distractedly clawed her cheek ; her eyes, 
sharpened to a glittering point, pierced the vic- 
tim’s face as she thrust her own near to it. 

Suddenly she wheeled and changed her 
tactics. 

“ Here I let me see the will you’re making : 
‘ To my brother Basil I leave my push-mobile, 
stern wheel is off, he can fix it, to my chum 
Snuffy I leave my mandolin, it has two strings 

busted, b-but ’” read Penelope aloud in 

high, strained tones which exploded in a qua- 
vering shriek. 

She flung the book — it was a Boy Scout 
diary, with the will scrawled and misspelt upon 
a blank page headed Memoranda — she flung it 
from her into the heart of the basswood. 

“ Look here ! ” Like a hurricane she turned 
on the victim. “ I don’t say you’re making all 
this up, but I do believe that, down deep, you’re 
not sure you’re poisoned an’ are going to die 
right away. You .only think you think you 
are ! ” 

How on earth Penelope’s girlish intuition 
leaped to the fact that there was more of melo- 
drama than of hopeless tragedy in this strange 
scene among the pale dunes Olive did not know, 
but at heart she felt herself going down on her 


i 82 


GIRLS OF THE 


shaking knees to Penelope for the way in which 
the younger girl handled the situation, even 
though Penny’s next words were delivered with 
her crudest gust. 

“Where do you feel bad^ anyhow?” She 
leveled her forefinger at the victim who, de- 
prived of the melancholy satisfaction of making 
his will and bequeathing his lame treasures, 
slanted his gaze up at her, his short neck with 
its double chin thrust forward ; there was a fat 
quiver of that chin now as if he were uncertain 
whether to follow her hopeful lead, or not. 

“ ‘ Ba-ad I he echoed waveringly. “ Why ! 
I’ve got a circus in my head or a merry-go-round 
— something that’s wheeling an’ spinning.” 

“ You’re just dizzy. Have you been wander- 
ing round in the woods?” 

, “ Yes, quite a bit.” 

“ Where else do you feel poisoned f Have 
you got cramps ? ” 

The victim rubbed his waist-line : “ No, but 
I feel kind o’ sick an’ — an’ ’s if ’twas low tide 
inside me.” 

“ Pshaw, ten to one you’re hungry 1 An’ 
they’re cooking supper over at our camp on the 
beach. Goodness ! I can just smell the bacon 
toasting here ; can’t you, Olive ? ” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 183 


“Ye-es/^ fibbed Blue Heron, spreading her 
dainty nostrils toward the broad sandy acres 
of up-hill and down-hill which separated the 
trio from the camp fire — that was later to be a 
Council Fire — on the beach. 

“ Bacon ! The victim stirred ; a hungry 
shudder shook him that gave way to a renewed 
shiver of despair ; he stretched out an arm to 
recover his book. 

“ No, you sha’n’t have it I You’re not going 
to die and leave your ‘ busted mandolin.’ . . . 
He! He! He! Hi!” Penelope’s giggle rang 
out shrilly. “ How long is it since you swal- 
lowed the poison ? You haven’t told yet how 
you came to take it ! ” 

“ I’ll tell you,” struck in another voice. A 
manly-looking Boy Scout appeared suddenly 
from behind the basswood, his broad hat pushed 
back from a haggard face. “ I went off to get 
help for him,” he explained. '‘I saw some 
camps, but they were a good way off. I thought 
I’d come back and haul him over there, where 
I could give him an antidote, you know, whites 
of eggs or salt an’ water — or something some- 
body v/ould let me have.” 

“ We have got all those things at our camp,” 
suggested Olive eagerly. 


184 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ You see, I don’t know how much he really 
is poisoned.” This older Scout looked down 
upon the fat victim. “It all happened this 
way; We're camping with a whole lot of 
other Scouts in that Boy Scout camp among 
the dunes on the opposite side of the river. 
Well I to-day our Scoutmaster said that Fatty 
an’ I might take the rowboat — we call him that 
— his name is Tommy Orr ” 

“ Most times they call me the Astronomer, 
because they say I’m always looking up,” mildly 
interjected the poisoned one. 

“ So you are ; fat boys who have short necks 
mostly do ; they can’t look at you straight I ” 
threw in Penelope. 

“ Ha ! Indeed ! Is that so ? ” The victim 
straightened himself more than he had done 
yet, to glare at her sarcastically, then collapsed 
into a huddle again. “Well, go on, Kenjo, 
tell them about the dead chewink with the 
blackberry in its beak,” he sighed. “ We call 
him Kenjo Red,” with a fat wave of the hand 
toward his brother Scout, “because we don’t 
need a fire in camp while we have his head.” 

The newcomer, whose scalp-locks escaping 
from under his broad hat were indeed of the 
finest hue, only smiled in a tired way and 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 185 

hastily took up the tale of woe where he 
dropped it. 

“Well, we two took the boat, rowed across 
to this side of the river and up Loaf Creek, 
the little creek that runs in round the Sugar- 
loaf ” 

“Yes, I know; we’re going to explore it 
some day,” put in Olive excitedly. “Was it 
in the woods at the head of the creek that he 
got the poison ? ” 

“ Yes, the ground was all sprayed white with 
it in one place, but Tommy didn’t notice it at 
first ; he’s only been three months a Scout. We 
had been wandering about the woods — they 
were pretty thick — after we landed from the boat 
and didn’t quite know where we were ! Tommy 
walked on ahead o’ me while I was trying to 
take our bearings ; he had been eating black- 
berries an’ went on eating ’em ” 

“Sour they were, too — mean sour!” inter- 
jected Tenderfoot Tommy Orr. 

“ When I started after him I saw that the 
ground was all sprayed white here and there 
with the lead poison that the State uses for 
getting rid of caterpillar pests and I yelled to 
him to stop. Just a little farther on we came 
upon two dead rabbits and three dead birds ; 


i86 


GIRLS OF THE 


one o’ the birds, a chewink — little grey ground- 
robbin^ you know — had a half-pecked black- 
berry in its beak ; another, a wild canary, was 
stiffening out, with a berry ’longside it.” 

This looked horribly serious. Tenderfoot 
Orr groaned aloud and rubbed his cushioned 
waist-line. 

“ Well I Tommy made up his mind then that 
he was a ‘ goner ’ as well as the chewink. I 
saw no house or camp near, so I hustled him 
back to the boat, rowed down the creek, landed 
here on the Sugarloaf, where I left him a few 
minutes ago, to look around and see in which 
direction there was a camp.” 

“ Ours is the nearest : we’ll give you all the 
antidotes you want — salt and water enough to 
float the boat — or the boy I Goody, how that 
bacon smells I ” Penelope sniffed vigorously 
to the dune breeze. “ We must be getting 
back anyway, mustn’t we, Olive? They won’t 
know what on earth’s become of us. Oh, 
come along ! ” She seized the tenderfoot’s 
fat arm as she might have seized that of her 
brother Jim. “Never mind the little diary- 
book ; exercise your will, now, instead of mak- 
ing it! ” 

And with a heavy groan, led by the mythical 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 187 

odors of bacon sizzling over an outdoor fire, 
the hungry tenderfoot picked up his broad hat 
that rested like an olive-green mushroom in a 
near-by patch of sage-brush, so alike in hue that 
it would be hard to tell one from the other, 
arose and followed her. 

Near where the dunes sloped down into the 
beach, the anxious party came upon Captain 
Andy. He eyed the girls aslant, reprovingly. 

“Well! you two would be a good pair to 
send after trouble,” he remarked caustically, 
“you take so long in getting back. I was just 
starting off on a cruise to look for you.” 

“ Hullo, Capt’n Andy ! ” boomed Kenjo, 
intercepting a reply by his joyous greeting to 
an old friend : “Yes” — reproachfully — “you’re 
all taken up with the Camp Fire Girls now — 
Scouts don’t get a look-in 1 ” 

“ Petticoats first — bloomers, rather 1 ” chuck- 
led the jolly mariner. “Skirts go ahead — 
meaning skirts have the preference, especially 
when they’re new-fangled skirts like these I ” 
pointing to the khaki ceremonial dresses of the 
two excited girls who had forgotten all about 
the fuel they gathered. 

“ Hey 1 what’s the matter with this Scout ? 
He don’t look very chipper.” 


i88 GIRLS OF THE 

The captain laid a hand on Tommy’s shoul- 
der. 

“He’s poisoned — -poisoned dead — or thinks 
he is ; from eating blackberries an’ arsenic an’ 
lead ! ” explained Penny with great lucidity. 

In a few words Kenjo cleared up the situa- 
tion. 

“ How long is it since he ate those black- 
berries ? ” asked Captain Andy, gravely. “ An 
hour yet ? ” 

“ Oh, I guess it is — pretty nearly an hour, 
anyway.” 

“ Well ! let me tell you that if he had got 
enough of that arsenate of lead into him to fin- 
ish him as it did the birds an’ rabbits, he'd hear 
more from it by this time. You’d have horri- 
ble cramps by now an’ you’d look a heap worse 
than you do ! ” The captain gazed down reas- 
suringly on Tenderfoot Tommy, alias “the 
Astronomer,” who, with fat neck thrust forward, 
was slanting a very anxious look up at him. 

“ So she said. She said I only b’lieved I 
b’lieved I was poisoned. She’s a brick.” The 
Astronomer blinked at Penelope now; 

“ I’m a star,” she informed him. “ That’s 
my Camp Fire name ; as you’re an Astronomer 
you can look up to me all you want to ! ” No- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 189 


body blamed Pen for her giggle then. ‘‘ You 
see, that dead chewink and the wild canary 
might have pecked at some more poisoned 
stuff besides the blackberries,” she sagely sug- 
gested. “ Maybe the sprayed poison wasn’t on 
the berries at all.” 

That’s so ! ” assented Captain Andy. “ You 
come over to my tent at the foot o’ the dunes ” 
— he pushed Tommy along by the shoulder. 
“ I know the signs of that poison, for I’ve used 
it myself; I’ll examine you an’ dose you, if 
necessary ; if not, you can have some supper. 
It’s all ready down there on the beach. Great 
guns I I was feelin’ scared about you and so was 
the Guardian, Miss Dewey.” He looked at the 
two tired girls. “ I thought, maybe, you were 
never coming back to play that Kullibigan 
game to-night, after my whittling out the witch- 
top for you ! ” 


CHAPTER XI 

KULLIBIGAN 


HE Indian game of Kullibigan was in 
full swing. 



Supper was over, a wonderful out- 
door banquet, for which the high tide furnished 
the orchestra, the white sands the table linen, 
with the last rays of the dying sun showering 
bouquets upon its damask. 

As if in answer to Captain Andy^s question 
earlier in the evening when he beheld the bevy 
of maidens in Indian dress upon the beach, 
there were two unexpected “ braves ” at the 
feast and hungry guests they were ; Kenjo, 
who was entered upon the school-roll of his 
native town as Kenneth Jordan, bearing in 
mind that “A Scout is courteous,” the fifth 
point of the Scout Law, insisted on toasting 
fresh relays of bacon for the hungry girls and 
for the Astronomer, who ate enormously. 

Captain Andy, in the absence of any severe 
symptoms of lead poisoning, had come to the 
conclusion that the tenderfoot was not going 


190 


THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 191 

to share the fate of the chewink, that he, appar- 
ently, did not stand in need, even, of an anti- 
dote ; still, as a precautionary measure, he 
flooded him inwardly with strong tea, beneficial 
in any case of poisoning, until the fat Astrono- 
mer declared that he could hear his final mouth- 
fuls of cake splash as they went down. 

The after-banquet songs were furnished by 
the hostesses who chanted their “ Wohelo ! ” 
cheer, greatly to the edification of the Scouts, 
followed by their song, “ Mystic Fire,” grace- 
fully dramatized by the waving of fringed 
arms, the swaying of girlish forms around the 
camp fire upon the twilight sands, lending the 
final touch of romance to the white wildness 
of the Sugarloaf, moving the flame of admira- 
tion in Kenjo to flicker up into : 

“ Gee I I thought we Boy Scouts were the 
‘ whole show ’ when it came to new stunts, but 
I guess it’s as Captain Andy says, ‘ Skirts go 
ahead I ’ ” with a boyish laugh. 

“ Well I youHl show them something by ’n’ by, 
when it gets dark, when you signal with lanterns 
or an old broom dipped in kerosene to our camp 
on the dunes across the river to say we’re safe 
here, for Captain Andy says he won’t let us row 
back there to-night,” spoke up the now drowsy 


192 


GIRLS OF THE 


Astronomer. “ He says we can sleep in his 
tent — a bully tent, divided up into rooms — at 
the foot of a sand-hill ; he was going to have 
his niece there, but he says she can bunk with 
the girls.^’ Tommy waved a fat hand in the 
direction of Kitty. 

“/ don’t care; that’s what I want to do,” 
spoke up little Kitty, erstwhile of “the bleed- 
ing heart,” rejoicing in the freedom of her 
green bloomers. “ Morning-Glory — I can’t pro- 
nounce her Indian name — says I can sleep with 
her,” shyly. “And we’ll wake up early and 
watch the dawn across the river and I may 
help her cook the breakfast — she’s to be one of 
the cooks to-morrow.” 

“ Indeed, you may, but don’t mistake me for 
Mary-Jane Peg in your sleep ; I don’t want to 
be taken for a pig in a poke I ” laughed Jessica, 
otherwise Welatawesit. “And now for Kulli- 
bigan ! What question shall we ask it first ? ” 

“Who’ll be married first?” suggested the 
Astronomer. “ That’s what girls always want 
to know, isn’t it? ” 

And then the excitement of the night began 
in earnest. 

The great burnished top, painted by firelight, 
was set to spinning madly upon a flat stone set 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 193 

in the sand, surrounded by a ring of sitting 
girls ; it revolved dizzily for many seconds, 
then fell over upon its broad head, as if bowing 
to Kitty. 

The laughter that followed this exploit of the 
guessing-top made dunes and sea ring ; Kitty 
was to be wedded first, instead of prematurely 
departing this life. 

“ Let us ask it something sensible, something 
that might have an answer in the near future,” 
suggested Betty Ayres — gay little Betty, whose 
Camp Fire name was Psuti, the Holly — after 
sundry other riddles had been propounded to 
the Kullibigan top for divination — questions as 
distant in speculation and wild in their answer 
as the lot which had fallen upon Kitty. Let’s 
ask who’ll be the first to attain the highest rank 
among the Camp Fire Girls, and become a Torch 
Bearer ! ” 

** Good ! ” approved Gheezies, the presiding 
Guardian of the Fire. 

Psuti, with two little hands upon the broad- 
est point of the tall top’s circumference, skilfully 
set it revolving upon the stone ; as before, it 
seemed to have no sense of the fitness of things ; 
it toppled toward her, as nearly as its falling di- 
rection — a wide point of debate — could be de- 


194 GIRLS OF THE 

termined, she having swiftly resumed her seat 
in the circle. 

“ Pshaw I it doesn’t know much : Morning- 
Glory will be the first Torch Bearer; she’s a 
Fire Maker already,” burst impetuously from 
one or two of the girls. “ And she’s going to 
do some work among little girls when we go 
back to the city, form a Nest of Blue Birds, as 
it’s called, among the poor children of that big 
playground which we visited, show them how 
to dress their dolls and so forth,” suggested 
Sesooa, “ make them happy once a week for 
three months ; that’s part of the test for becom- 
ing a Torch Bearer.” 

“ I suppose you’ll draw that little deaf-and- 
dumb girl whose life you saved into the nest — 
eh?” Miinkwdn turned inquiringly toward 
Morning-Glory. “ Whew ! I’ll never forget 
that day — the shock we all got 1 ” The breast 
of Arline’s ceremonial dress, embroidered with 
her rainbow symbol, heaved ; the many-colored 
honor-beads upon her neck shook. “ Fancy ! 
the poor child drowning, or next door to it, in 
two feet and a half of water ! ” 

“ Two feet and a half of water ! Drowning ! 
A deaf-and-dumb child I ” Nobody had noticed 
the “ shock ” which Kenjo experienced as the 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 195 

Rainbow’s words fell upon his ear, reaching 
him where he squatted on the sands, just outside 
the circle of girls gathered round the fortune- 
telling top, now lying idle upon the flat stone. 

“ Is — is a Torch Bearer the highest rank 
among the Camp Fire Girls ? ” Kenjo went on 
to ask eagerly, thrusting the flame of his red 
head dangerously near to the Council Fire. 
“ To be an Eagle Scout is the highest a fellow 
can go among the Boy Scouts — and mighty 
few ever get there I A Scout must have twenty- 
one merit badges for that ! But we have an 
Eagle Scout in our camp,” proudly. “ He’s a 
sort of Assistant Scoutmaster, directing the 
athletics. He saved a deaf-and-dumb child 
from drowning in shallow water this summer — 
dragged her out and brought her to, resusci- 
tated her ; a Camp Fire Girl helped him.” 

“ Helped him / He helped her, you 
mea-ean I ” The excited challenge delivered 
in three girlish voices rose to a screaming trio. 
“ Where did it happen ? What’s his name ? ” 
followed in a minor key. 

“ Yes, where did it happen ? ” gasped the 
Blue Heron, Olive, bending excitedly forward 
from her place near the fire. 

“ In the city of Clevedon, I think. Stack 


196 


GIRLS OF THE 


comes from there or from some town near it ; 
he was dressed for a big Boy Scout Rally at 
the Clevedon Armory and was taking a short 
cut across a public playground when he heard 
a lot of children yelling — girls shrieking ** 

“ IVe weren’t shrieking at all ! There I ** 
flung out Sesooa between her teeth. ** If 
‘ Stack’ is the only name he’s got, I don’t think 
much of it.” The firefly in Sally’s eyes danced 
upon the twilight. 

“ That’s what we call him in camp ; his name 
is Miles Stackpole.” 

“That’s better,” came from Morning-Glory, 
Miles’s partner in that playground rescue. 

“ Stack said the girl who helped was a 
pippin.” Here the Astronomer who had been 
dozing upon the firelit:, sands suddenly awoke 
from a dream in which Penelope’s red cheek 
was a poisoned cherry and he a chewink peck- 
ing at it to his destruction. “ He said she was 
a peach and could do something,” went on 
Tenderfoot Tommy ; “ that she wasn’t all fluff 
an’ stuff or frills an’ stuff, like most girls, afraid 
of a little wetting ! ” 

“Oh! indeed? A lot he must know about 
girls 1 ” Every voice in the feminine circle 
went to swell this sarcasm or something like it. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 197 

Each feminine soul there felt that life could 
not be all mystic motions and ceremonial 
dresses, their rich cream at present, nor yet 
bloomers and middy blouses ; all looked for- 
ward to the pleasing variety of frilly hours 
again, with hearts, if only for the space of a 
short party-hour, correspondingly frivolous. 

Meanwhile the Astronomer, with his gaze 
slanting upward from the sands and trained 
upon the feminine circle, was suffering at the 
hands of Ken jo who had tried to stifle his con- 
fidences. 

** Oh I Won’t Stack just lick you when we 
get back to camp and he hears how you gave 
him away ? ” scolded the older Scout. “ You go 
to sleep again ; that’s the only time you’re safe. 
Fatty. We’re going to ask the Kullibigan top 
another question, something exciting, with real 
‘ pep ’ in it, this time : ‘ Who’s going to dig up 
a fortune from the sands ? ’ May I come in on 
the answer to this ? ” Ken appealed eagerly to 
the Guardian of the Camp Fire. 

“ Certainly. And may you come in on the 
fortune, too, if there is one 1 ” Thus Gheezies 
gave her smiling consent, tagging it with a 
good wish. 

“ Oh I that’s too far-fetched to be exciting ; 


198 


GIRLS OF THE 


nobody really believes in finding Captain 
Kidd’s treasure nowadays, although Captain 
Andy says that some of it was certainly hidden 
along the coast here, but that the tidal current 
must have sucked it out into the river long 
ago,” protested Betty, in a fringed flutter. 

“ And Stack says that he met a professor of 
something who was round here studying tides, 
and the prof said he didn’t believe that the cur- 
rent could do any such thing I ” threw back Ken 
hotly. 

“ Oh ! it’s such a hackneyed old question, any- 
way.” Thus Morning-Glory backed up Betty. 

A regular * chestnut,’ ” yawned Penelope, 
who was getting sleepy. 

“ Well ! isn’t a ‘ chestnut yarn ’ the best kind 
to anchor to with a hope of its coming true ? ” 
Kenjo appealed to the Guardian with a fire 
that matched his ruddy hair. “At least” — 
muttering low — “ I think I learned in high 
school that some old fellow said that.” 

“ He said a ‘platitude’ was ; I’m not sure but 
that they’re one and the same thing,” replied 
Gheezies, with a smile. 

“ Ah, but we’ve something to anchor to be- 
sides a ‘ chestnut ’ — Stack and I ! ” Kenneth 
Jordan, second-class Scout, thrust his fiery 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 199 

head close to Jessica’s and spoke in a hollow 
voice of mystery scarcely to be heard in the 
firelit twilight beyond her ear, although Sesooa, 
on the other side of him, caught crumbs of the 
confidence. “ We said we wouldn’t tell any- 
body lest they’d laugh at us for digging.” The 
Scout became a husky shell for his secret. 
“ But I guess, maybe. Stack won’t mind my 
telling you as you helped him save that dumb 
child. He an’ I ” — the secret began to crack 
the shell — “he an’ I were down on the Neck 
yesterday,” jerking an elbow in the direction of 
the sand-bar at the river’s mouth, “ and there 
was an old man there, hunting big hen-clams, 
at low tide ; he told us he was over ninety ; we 
asked him how long he expected to live an’ he 
said : * Down here, you live as long as you want 
to ! ’” 

“ Is that the secret ? ” 

There was a shout from the girls. Ken’s 
voice had risen like the tide upon the old clam- 
hunter’s words. It sank mysteriously again. 

“ We asked him, too ” — the secret was pop- 
ping out now in Jessica’s favored ear — “ whether 
he believed there was treasure hidden along that 
beach or among the dunes. He said, ‘ Sure as 
a hen-clam hops there is I ’ Then he put hi§ 


200 


GIRLS OF THE 


face close to Stack’s — he hadn’t a tooth — and 
pointed to a certain spot among the dunes 
and said that a few years ago (we dug out of 
him that ’twas about thirty) a handful of old 
gold and silver coins had been picked up there. 
We pumped him further, but his mind wan- 
dered, he didn’t seem able to pin it long to any- 
thing, he only mumbled and shuffled off after a 
big hen-clam — surf-clam, you know — that tried 
to get away from him by hopping off on its one 
funny little leg that it thrust out of the shell. 
’Twas the queerest thing you ever saw to watch 
him trying to rake it up with his iron fork.” 

“ Must ha’ been ! A hopping clam I ” This 
set Penny giggling, for the Scout’s voice had 
risen again upon the irrelevant matter of the 
aged clam-hunter’s raking among the treasures 
left by the last high tide. 

Her paroxysm brought Kenjo to himself and 
to his manners, set him diffidently apologizing 
to the Guardian for daring to drop a secret 
within her magic ring, at the other end of her 
firelit circle. 

“ Stack ’d go for me for doing such a thing,” 
he gasped. “ I guess I put my foot in it, too, 
like Fatty ! Well ! here goes for pumping the 
guessing-top about that treasure 1 ” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 201 


With a strong twist of his tanned hands he 
set the Kullibigan revolving ; it spun itself dizzy 
and fell between Sally and Arline. 

“ Never mind ; we’ll try again ; best two out 
of three ! ” cried the Scout. “ Now, then, old 
top, spin your durndest. Tell us who digs up 
a fortune from the sands ! ” 

The Kullibigan answered his appeal, thrilled 
him with a half-superstitious tingle from neck 
to heel by sprawling over toward him. 

“ Again ! Again ! Once more ! ” 

It fell precipitately toward Morning-Glory, 
turned a somersault and stood upon its head. 

“ Well ! it has given me one chance to come 
in on the treasure, anyhow.” Thus Kenjo, 
crestfallen over its last dizzy feat, consoled him- 
self. “Stack an’ I’ll dig; you bet we’ll dig; 
we’ll take Toiney into the secret. I believe he’d 
scent a coin as he scents a spring a mile off ! ” 

“ Who’s Toiney ! ” For the last minute the 
girls had sat very still, not a leather fringe 
stirring ; now they spoke again. 

“ Toiney ! Oh I he’s an Assistant Scout- 
master who gives us lessons in wood-lore and 
in tracking an’ trailing; he’s a French Ca- 
nadian, with a strain of Indian in him. Well I” 
Kenjo heaved a long breath. “ He’ll be organ- 


202 


GIRLS OF THE 


izing a search party to look for us — if he hasn’t 
done so already. He^s the stuff, although I 
guess you girls would call him queer stuff ! ” 

“ Are you going to try to signal to the oppo- 
site dunes to let them know you’re safe? ” asked 
the Camp Fire Girl whose name meant Peace. 

‘‘ I’m not going to ‘ try.’ I’m going to do it, 
signal by semaphore code the word ‘ Safe,’ if 
Captain Andy can let me have a couple of 
camp lanterns — that is, if I can make ’em see 
me at our camp, get their attention I ” 

“ I guess I have only one lantern that’s strong 
enough to be seen at a distance,” responded 
the mariner. 

“Weill if you have some kerosene oil and 
an old broom that you don’t mind being burned 
up?” 

“ Hurrah ! we’ll furnish you with that,” cried 
the girls, all eager for the exhibition. 

And, now, the Boy Scouts had their innings 
so far as a “ showing-off stunt ” was concerned. 

Scaling a very high rock whose base was 
laved by the tide, pushing the corn broom for 
a burnt offering before him, Ken drew up the 
lantern and oil-can shoved aloft by the captain. 

A ring of excited girls, with their Guardian, 
scattered to a little distance whence they could 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 203 

have a good view of the signaling Scout and 
his performance. 

One minute, and the oil-soaked broom flamed, 
its blaze streaming forth, a mighty flare-up, to 
be seen miles off ! 

The Scout waved the burning besom to and 
fro, making strange, mysterious passes with it, 
before attempting to signal a message. “ If I 
can only get their attention at our camp ! ” he 
muttered yearningly. 

There were a few very anxious moments. 

Then Captain Andy roared up to the signal- 
man : 

“ It’s all right I You’ve got ’em ! They see 
you. There’s a light showing up on a peak of 
those other dunes that wasn’t there before. 
Most likely they were out searching an’ watch- 
ing for a signal from you. Go ahead with the 
message ! ” 

Then Ken lowered the lantern with its strong 
reflector almost to his feet, his left arm held the 
blazing broom at arm’s length — sowing a hiss- 
ing fire-crop in the sea — to form the letter S. 

“Safe. Kenjo.” He spelled it out by the 
code, fiery letter by letter. 

“ Isn’t it wonderful — that fire-talk ? ” breathed 
little Kitty ; Mary-Jane Peg and the orchard 


204 GIRLS OF THE 

seemed very far away ; she had not begun to 
live until now. 

“ Broom’s not burned out yet, Cap ! ” shouted 
down the Scout to Captain Andy. Here’s for 
signaling a message that’ll keep ’em guessing 
all night ! ” 

“ What’s that ? ” 

“ ‘ Safe at Camp Morning-Glory ’ I Sounds 
as if we were camping on the sun’s trail. Here 
goes ! W atch — me ! ’ ’ 

The broom-handle, sprayed with oil, was sacri- 
ficed to Glory, the lingering flame of the besom, 
of the compressed corn fibre, having given out. 

But if ever a camp broom perished gloriously, 
that one did. 

Its waterside illumination set the sea aflame, 
lit up the brown, beaded figures of the girls, 
caused far distant lighthouses, with other noc- 
turnal eyes gleaming from headland and hill 
up and down the opposite shore of the river, to 
pale and wink themselves out for the moment. 

Ken tossed the handle into the river, a proud 
Scout having demonstrated that along every 
line it was not “ Skirts go ahead — skirts take 
the lead I ” even if they were ceremonial skirts. 

‘‘ Well ! I guess our Scoutmaster and Toiney 
will feel easy about us now ; they surely got 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 205 

some of that message I flashed ’em,” he pro- 
claimed sliding down the rock, feeling like a 
king-boy. “’Twas good of you girls to let me 
make a fire-stick an’ fiddlestick out o’ your 
camp broom,” laughing triumphantly. “ We 
owe you a supper, too. Tommy an’ I — I hope 
you’ll let us pay it back some time ! ” 

“ Oh I yes, when we visit your camp — if we 
ever do. Boys can’t cook like girls, though ! ” 
“ Can’t they ? Haw ! Haw I ” came in ac- 
cents of cotton-wool irony from the Astrono- 
mer’s padded throat. “ We’ll give you red- 
flannel hash, with frills to it. I say, Ken, let’s 
give ’em something now — let’s give a rousing 
Scout yell for them I She ” — leveling a fat fin- 
ger at Penelope — “ first got me to thinking that 
I only thought I thought, she thought I was 
poisoned. Hey I that was the way of it, wasn’t 
it?” appealing to the convulsed Penny. “ Now, 
then, rise to it, Ken jo ! ” 

The youthful signalman fought shy of this 
ebullition at first, but on Captain Andy’s say- 
ing approvingly : “ That’s the very caper I 
Good idea, Ken ; go ahead an’ drive it ! ” he 
did drive the patriotic yell in honor of their 
girl-hostesses with all the might that was in him. 
With his arm across the Astronomer’s fat 


206 THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 


back as the latter stood with cushioned legs 
wide apart upon the sands, Tommy’s arm, like- 
wise, embracing his backbone, swaying together 
like double bellows, they pantingly drove that 
yell while the dune-breeze joined in and the 
sonorous gush of the high tide, too, seemed to 
proclaim that it was the “ very caper,” a proper 
tribute, indeed. 

A-M-E-R-I-C-A 
Boy Scouts ! Boy Scouts ! 

U. S. A. 

Camp Fire Girls ! Camp Fire Girls ! 

Camp Fire Girls / " 

‘‘Oh-h!” It was a prolonged ejaculation; 
the girls’ eyes were wet and winking above the 
wreathing smiles upon their lips as the notes 
boomed off over the night-tide, setting the river 
a-roar. 

“ Oh, this has been a won-der-ful evening 
altogether,” said the Guardian, her face an 
illumination that beamed softly upon the final 
echo which seemed to strike those distant dunes 
upon the opposite side of the tidal-river. 

“ Aye I Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls I ” 
chuckled Captain Andy meditatively. “ Boy 
Scouts and Camp Fire Girls, theirs — theirs is 
the coming tide ! ” 


CHAPTER XII 


FLOURED GLASS 

S ESOOA heard a sob. A frank sob that 
published the trouble of some girl’s heart 
to the dunes and to the sea I And Sally 
did not know what to do about it. 

It was the first sob she had heard during the 
six weeks that the girls of the Morning-Glory 
Camp Fire had been camping on the white 
Sugarloaf. 

“ Somebody is thinking that it’s nearly the 
end of August and that we’ll be going back to 
the city pretty soon ! ” she surmised. “ Oh-h, 
to be a seal! ” The golden spark in her eyes, 
the dancing firefly, lit out over the waves and 
hovered above a sleek dog-like head, but larger 
than a dog’s, appearing above the water some 
fifty yards from the white beach on which she 
stood. “ Oh, to be a harbor seal and stay here 
always to sun oneself on a sandspit in summer 
and in winter ride an ice-cake, as the seals do ! 
I was made to be a wild thing ! ” Her laugh- 
ter rippled, clear and low, like the ebbing tide, 
207 


2o8 


GIRLS OF THE 


but she dammed it up lest it should intrude 
upon the feeling betrayed by that other unac- 
countable sound which she had just heard, com- 
ing from the farther side of a barrier of rock 
that intersected the beach. 

“ I wonder, now, Which of the girls it is ? ” she 
silently speculated. “ Is Kitty yearning for her 
orchard and the grunting society of Mary-Jane 
Peg? But she seems so happy here among 
us I Yet, perhaps, the scare we got three days 
ago upset her, when that big seal dived under 
our rowboat and upset it, half-way up ’Loaf 
Creek ! Oh, bubbles ! that was a bad spillP 
Here another low -splash of laughter dropped 
its liquid notes to mingle with the distant mirth 
of the tide, breaking far out, as Sesooa, in 
thought, glanced past the rock-barrier, past 
some acres of intervening dunes freshly swept 
by a southwesterly wind, at the winding blue 
creek, Sugarloaf Creek, that crept in round the 
back of the Sugarloaf Peninsula until it lost 
itself in the woods where the fat Astronomer 
came to grief. 

“ Captain Andy says we were lucky to see a 
seal out of the water even at the cost of a duck- 
ing,” she ruminated further, “and that we, 
probably, wouldn’t have done so at all if that 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 209 


great big fellow, weighing a couple of hundred 
pounds or so, hadn’t gone far up the creek 
after the ‘ feed,’ meaning the huge eel that he 
was devouring, half out of water, when we 
rowed round a marshy bend right on to him. 
. . . Goodness ! of all the ‘ mix-ups ’ then I 

I’ll never forget it!” The last words formed 
themselves aloud in her laughter-filled throat. 

Six of us girls struggling in the water 1 Sybil 
and Kitty an^ Betty up to their necks although 
’Loaf Creek is shallow I And that big, spotted 
harbor seal which bumped into us and capsized 
us, just making for the creek’s mouth as hard 
as he could swim ! I guess he knew where the 
deep water was, all right I ” 

She stood gazing out at the receding tide, 
seeing again the sleek head of the capsizing 
mammal as he put for the open water, the tidal 
channel, doubtless, vowing by the shades of his 
ancestors, the tidal tadpoles, that he would 
never be caught up a narrow creek again by a 
boat-load of shrieking girls. 

‘‘I hardly think it’s Kitty who is sorrowful 
or ‘ peeved ’ over something.” Sally was con- 
scious of the thought which crowded out the 
seal as'another low, gulping noise, mysteriously 
like a sob, came from the other side of the 


210 


GIRLS OF THE 


crusted barrier of rock. “ That doesn’t sound 
like Kitty, either I ” She put her ear to the 
crusty rock-heart. “ Kitty Sill behaved as well 
as any of us all through the ducking in the 
creek — our wildest adventure as yet — all she 
said when it was over and we were safe in the 
boat again was: ‘Will you tell Mary -Jane Peg 
that I was brave ? ’ She’s simply killing with 
her talk about that pedigreed pig ! She’s the 
funniest little thing! And Jessica vowed she’d 
make a special call on Mary-Jane. . . . Oh, 

gracious ! ” Sally’s hands came softly together 
upon a flame of dismay that scorched their 
palms. “Good gracious, I do believe it’s 
Jessica, herself — Morning-Glory, if you please 
— who’s having a quiet cry ‘ all by her lonely ’ I 
And she’s the most popular girl in camp.” 

The camp favorite, the most popular girl, 
had, nevertheless, if sounds could be trusted, a 
pent-up trouble of some kind which she wasn’t 
withholding from the sea ; there was a restless 
movement on the other side of the rock as if 
somebody rolled over on the sands, followed by 
a lonely, grieved sobbing that appealed to the 
ebbing tide for comfort. 

Now, all at once, impulsive Sally was filled 
with a jealousy of that low-ebb tide for being 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 211 

chosen as a confidant ; she would have liked to 
thrust it farther out still. Before she knew 
what she was doing this feeling and another, 
overwhelming curiosity, spread wide their 
wings and wafted her lightly over the rock- 
barrier. 

She descended with a pounce upon the other 
side and immediately began to flutter and cackle 
inarticulately, like a hen in a flower-bed. 

The patch of white beach beyond the rock- 
fence was fairly abloom with colored articles 
which attracted the scanty sunshine that, to- 
day, was having a tilt with the ruffling south- 
westerly wind as to which should rule the 
weather. 

One sunbeam poked his finger inquisitively 
among the small blocks of paint in a box of 
water-colors lying open upon the sands. An- 
other slanted his eye like an amused connois- 
seur at a sheet of cardboard pinned down by a 
chunk of pale driftwood and bearing a crude, 
very highly colored painting of blue water be- 
tween dauby green marsh-banks and of a boat 
being upset by some fabulous sea-monster that 
was apparently trying to climb into it. 

Sally jumped to the conclusion that this was 
meant for a kind of “colored supplement ” comic 


212 


GIRLS OF THE 


illustration of the accident which had happened 
in ’Loaf Creek, on which her thoughts had 
lately been dwelling, for the seal had the ears 
of a jackass and claws an inch long upon his 
fore-flippers which grappled the side of the 
boat. 

She cackled exceedingly at sight of it and 
shuffled in the sand, like the hen who has found 
not colors only, but something fruitful, also, in 
the bed of bloom. 

Then she caught her breath with an amazed 
start, like Captain Andy’s when he saw the 
same sort of thing ; a third sunbeam was sur- 
veying himself under difficulties in a sheet of 
glass about the size of a small window-pane, 
which looked as if it had been floured over, 
dulled and whitened by a very watery paste of 
some kind. 

“ Gee whiz ! ” exclaimed Sally who thought 
that she had eschewed slang with Penelope be- 
fore her eyes as a horrible example. “ What 
are you doing with the pane of glass, Jessica 
dearie, mixing biscuits on it?” with a low ex- 
plosion of laughter. 

“ No-o,” mumbled the owner of the flower- 
bed who, with face averted from the intruder, 
looked rather like a glossy, green shrub trained 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 213 

and clipped into fantastic shape, of the style 
which, once upon a time, presided over old-fash- 
ioned gardens ; for her sweater of dark green 
wool and her Camp Fire Girl’s Tam O’Shanter 
finished with an emerald pompon matched in 
hue her olive-green khaki skirt — all of which ap- 
parently failed to create a verdant atmosphere 
of spring in her young heart at present. 

“ Are you trying cookery experiments on the 
glass ? ” laughed Sesooa, much mystified and 
excitingly tickled by curiosity, for her roving 
gaze now took in among the litter of articles 
on the sands a little earthenware crock with a 
paste that looked like very thin, dyspeptic 
dough in it. “Olive- — Blue Heron — says that 
her father used to declare that her cookery 
ought to be tried upon the Society for the Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Animals before human 
beings were allowed to partake of it — that was 
before she became a Camp Fire Girl — but 
you’re testing it on the pane of glass. Why ! 
Jess — Jessica — Morning-Glory — I didn’t mean 
to tease you, honey ; you’re not peeved with 
me for finding you here all alone and feeling 
blue, are you ? ” Sesooa flung herself upon 
her knees on the wind-ruffled sand and slipped 
an arm around the green shoulders of her 


214 


GIRLS OF THE 


Camp Fire Sister whose breast was again 
ploughed by random sobs. 

Sally — the little oriole of the city playground 
— was gay in throat and inquisitive as that 
orange-and-black songster, but she was won- 
derfully soft of heart, too ; she bit her lip and 
puckered up her eye-corners, determined that, 
if she could help it, a Camp Fire Sister should 
not weep alone any more than she should 
stand alone. 

Then in the space of one long breath her 
working face was smoothed out as if an 
electric iron passed over it. Her glance had 
fallen again upon the dauby comic picture of 
the blue creek and the boat with half-formed hu- 
man figures, some of which were being wildly 
shot into the air by a dragon-like seal. 

“ Ha ! you were painting that — our ducking 
in ’Loaf Creek — for little Rebecca, weren’t 
you ? ” Caressingly she dropped her chin 
upon the green heave of Morning-Glory’s 
shoulders. “ You’re going to send it to her, 
eh ? But surely you’re not crying about her ? 
She probably doesn’t realize that she’s deaf- 
and-dumb, different from other children. And 
you’ve done so much for her, dearie, saving 
her life and all — the Eagle Scout only came in 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 215 


on the tail-end of the rescue. And you can do 
more when we go back to the city.” 

“Oh I what d’you take me for? F-Fudge ! 
I’m not crying about her — I’m not so — so soft 
— what earthly g-good would it do her ? ” 

The Morning-Glory’s broken accents were 
snappish, scraping against a rasp within. 

“ Well I you needn’t eat me up for suggest- 
ing it.” Sally withdrew her chin and made a 
face at the green shoulders whose back was 
still toward her. “ I’m going away if you’re 
as cross as a thorn ! ” 

“ I wish to goodness you would I No, I 
don't I Come here, Sally ! ” Jessica stretched 
out a hand as the other girl rose to her feet. 
“ I don’t mean to be raspy and snappy ; I have 
tried to live up to the Camp Fire law all 
the time we’ve been here, to ‘ Be happy ! ’ I 
oughtn’t to say that, for it didn’t really take 
any ‘ trying ’ — I have been ! But every one of 
the rest of you girls have a home to go back 
to — when this — this jolly camping-time is over. 
I haven’t I ” 

“ Haven’t you a home with the Deerings, 
with Olive and Sybil and their awfully rich 
father — and your Cousin Anne ? ” 

“ Olive heard, to-day, from her father that 


2I6 


GIRLS OF THE 


he’s going to be married again in the fall ; 
Sybil doesn’t know it yet; she only told me. 
Olive is away off on a sand-hill, now, making 
up her mind to be lovely to the new stepmother 
because she thinks that’s what her own mother 
would have her do. But ” — a long-drawn 
gasp — perhaps the new wife won’t want 
Cousin Anne or me in the house — me, any- 
way, as I’m no relation at all to the Deerings.” 

“ Pshaw, I’ll bet she’ll be delighted to have 
you I If not. Cousin Anne and you can live 
together.” 

“ Cousin Anne hasn’t enough money to sup- 
port herself, much less me I She had, but she 
lost most of it a few years ago by the failure of 
a mining company in which she had invested 
largely. She had just enough left for * pin 
money ’ as Mr. Deering, who’s her cousin, told 
her ; so he offered her a home in his house 
to be a kind of mother to his daughters and 
superintend their education. Then ” — another 
long gasp shaking the moss-green shoulders 
— “ then when the friend of Mother’s who 
took me in after my mother died nearly two 
years and a half ago — (I used to help her 
with her housework, this friend, and call her 
‘ Auntie ’ though she wasn’t any relation, 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 217 

either), when she had to go to China with her 
husband, Cousin Anne was so worried, not 
knowing what was to become of me, that Mr. 
Deering, to please her, I suppose, invited me 
on a visit to his home for a year, or a year and 
a half, until I get through high school. . . . 

But oh ! — oh I it’s hard for a girl like me to 
lose both father and mother — not to belong to 
anybody — really.” 

Yet, even as her lips quivered upon this 
climax of her sorrow, Morning-Glory sat de- 
liberately up, exposing her face to Sally’s voice, 
and gazed off at the far-out tide which the 
ever-quickening southwesterly wind was ruf- 
fling with a prophecy of squalls and rain, deter- 
mined not to make a scene here on the cloudy 
sands as she did in the Deerings’ library under 
the glamor of that painted window where the 
young monk pored over a parchment book. 

But the association of then and now pres- 
ently made her chin tremble again ; blindly 
she caught at Sally’s hand. 

“ You — you were laughing at my pasty sheet 
of glass,” she gasped. “ But this morning, 
when I got thinking how, in ten days, now, 
we’ll leave these lovely Sugarloaf dunes, go 
back to the city and to school, to hard work. 


2I8 


GIRLS OF THE 


studying, I felt that if — if I could only study 
along the lines Father had picked out for me, I 
wouldn^t mind quite so much — that it would 
seem to bring me nearer to him and to my 
mother, too.’' 

“ What did he want you to do ? ” 

“ He had it all planned before he died three 
years ago that I was to take up his work — 
study art and design — become an artist. He 
thought I could by an’ by earn my living, as 
he did, by getting into the designing-room 
connected with some big stained-glass works 
where they turn out beautiful painted windows. 

. . . He ” — breathlessly — “ he said I had 

just the same love of color that he had. And 
I have ! I have I ” passionately. “ When I 
wake early and watch a dawn here over the 
river and those opposite white dunes, I feel it — 
feel it in my very toes 1 ” curling up those tin- 
gling members. 

“ Ha-a ! ” Sesooa laughed shortly, but it 
wasn’t a mirthful chuckle; the firefly was 
snuffed out in her eyes, the golden sparkle 
that lent such life to them. 

“ And why can’t you become an artist — or a 
designer — look forward to earning your living 
in that way ? ” she gravely asked. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 219 

“Oh, because Fve no money, not a dollar, 
not a cent ! ” shiveringly. “ And I should have 
some in order to educate me properly ; Fd have 
to take a long art course in some School of De- 
sign — or Institute ” 

“ But if you were to tell Olive — her father is 
so rich I ” 

“ Sally ! Do you think I want to ‘ sponge ^ 
on them? No, Fll just have to work ever so 
hard when we go back to the city, finishing out 
my course in the Commercial High School, 
learning to be an expert typist, so that I can 
earn my living as a stenographer. Other girls 
like that — the noisy room with fifty typewriters 
going together — I don’t I” 

“ Every one to his taste I Fd prefer it to 
painting on glass. Were you trying to do that 
this morning?” glancing at the befloured pane. 

“Yes, father used to prepare the glass first 
by rubbing it with lime (I hadn’t any lime) and 
then spreading the thinnest layer of common 
paste over it ; when that dried he’d lay the sheet 
of glass over the paper design which he had 
already painted and outline the design in pencil 
— make a cartoon, as he said — on the glass. I 
was just trying my hand on common glass” — 
whimsically — “ thinking how it would be if 


220 


GIRLS OF THE 


some day I could paint a design for a beautiful 
Camp Fire Girls’ colored window.” 

Slowly Morning-Glory raised the dulled glass 
and gave a glimpse of a crudely painted design 
underneath, which yet showed original talent ; 
the figure of a Camp Fire Girl in a ceremonial 
dress and pearly head-band, her feet poised 
upon cloud-billows that looked very like ethe- 
real footballs at the present stage of the crude 
design; over her glowed what was meant to be a 
sunburst, in one hand was a variegated flower, a 
morning-glory, in the other an unrolling scroll in- 
tended to bear the magic watchword, “Wohelo I” 

“ Oh ! I think it’s lovely. Oh ! aren’t you 
clever? You ought to get a National Honor 
from Headquarters for even thinking out such 
a thing,” effervesced Sally. “ Oh I I wish you 
could ‘ cut ’ the typewriters and do what you 
want to do. Haven’t you any relatives on your 
father’s side who’d help you out?” 

“ No ; his only sister died when she was 
young ; there are just some cousins who have 
large families of their own.” Jessica laid down 
the pasty pane of glass, too cloudily dulled to 
be ever painted on successfully. 

Suddenly Sesooa skipped to her feet and be- 
gan kicking at the pale sands like an explorer. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 221 


“ O dear / ” she gasped, trying to be funny, 
and failing, “why can’t what the Kullibigan 
guessing-top promised come true and some of 
us dig up a fortune from the sands?” 

“Not much likelihood of that ! Besides the 
fortune-telling top was so divided in its spin- 
ning mind about who was to find it I ” Morn- 
ing-Glory laughed chokingly. 

“ And aren’t there any other living relatives 
of your mother’s ? ” 

“ Yes, one — my dear, handsome great-gran’- 
father in the old miniature ! ” The speaker 
dimpled through the tear-stains on her cheeks, 
her voice rocked between a sob and a song, her 
white teeth flashed at the dead-low tide which 
was just on the turn and thinking of flowing 
back again. “ Hds alive to me 1 I wish I had 
brought the ivory miniature down here with 
me ; then you girls would have fallen in love 
with him in his blue coat and brass buttons — 
he has the livingest^ merriest smile — the minia- 
ture was painted when he was a very young 
man ; he was over forty when he was drowned, 
sticking to his ship and one helpless passenger 
to the last, while most of the crew tried to es- 
cape in boats.” 

“ I should think you’d like to go over to the 


222 


GIRLS OF THE 


old town of Newburyport where you told me he 
once lived and see it — it’s not so awfully far 
from here by motor-boat and train.” 

At this Jessica winced again ; such a longing 
had been in her breast all summer, but she was 
a loyal, loving girl who hated to draw more 
than was necessary on Cousin Anne’s resources 
while in camp and even a forty-mile, round- 
about journey would cost something. 

“ My great-grandfather. Captain Josiah Dee, 
only sailed out of Newburyport and down the 
Merrimac River, over the sand-bar at its mouth, 
when his ship, The Wave Queen^ was simply 
‘ballasted,’ so Mother told me ; then he’d make 
a long trip to the West Indies and when he 
came back heavily loaded — or the ship was — 
he’d put into Baltimore or New York, — some 
big seaport ! He made a good deal of money, 
but spent nearly all of it ; his wife died in 1839 
and the next year he went away on his last 
voyage ; before he came back his only son, my 
grandfather, heard a rumor of gold in Califor- 
nia and started off there to make a fortune, 
taking only the miniature in a wooden case 
that he made for it and a little old Bible with 
him.” 

“ Did he make a fortune ? ” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 223 


“ No, he never got farther than the Isthmus 
of Panama ; it was so hard to reach the Pacific 
Coast in those days. He was sick after landing 
on the Isthmus and stayed there a long time. 
Any letters that may have been sent never 
reached him. At last he got back to America, 
to New York, and there heard that The Wave 
Queen had been wrecked on her last voyage 
and every one aboard her, captain and crew, 
lost.’^ 

“ Ugh-hl he must have felt bad then,^’ came 
softly from Sesooa. 

“ He did. He drew out a little money that 
my great-grandfather had deposited in a New 
York bank in his son’s name and his own, and 
took ship right away for England where his 
grandparents had come from. But he must 
have been restless,” meditatively ; “ he came 
back to America again, just after the Civil War, 
settled in the South and married quite late 
in life ; my mother was his only child. . . . 

Always he kept the old miniature for which he 
had a leather case made and, oh I Fm so glad 
he did.” The Morning-Glory’s lip quivered 
again, but the moisture in her eyes sparkled. 
“ Whenever I look at it, I feel that, whatever 
happens, I just must be as ‘ game ’ as my 


224 


GIRLS OF THE 


great-gran’daddy who was a hero, by all ac- 
counts, and saved as many lives as Captain 
Andy did. Perhaps he, too, sang Captain 
Andy’s old sea-song about ‘ when perils gather 
round ’ : 

sing a little and laugh a little 
And work a little and play a little 
And fiddle a little and foot it a little, 

As bravely as we can ! 

As bravely as we can ! ’ 

And that’s what I’m going to do even among 
a storm of typewriters I ” 

“Yes, and you have ten whole days yet before 
you need think about facing that storm I And 
picture the fun we’re going to have in the 
meantime ! ” Sally crowed over the cheering 
prospect. “ Think of the Grand Council Fire 
meeting which our Guardian is arranging, 
when we’re to meet and have a picnic with two 
other Camp Fire tribes of this region, the 
Granite Shore Tribe and the Twin- Light Tribe.” 

“ It’s the Twin-Light Tribe, who take their 
name from the twin lighthouses on Thatcher’s 
Island, who want to give a party in our honor, 
next week, at an hotel on the mainland and 
invite some of the Boy Scouts, too, from their 
camp on the dunes, across the river.” Jessica’s 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 225 

eyes shone now between her red eyelids like 
twin-lights waking up. ‘‘Then, indeed, we’ll 
all ‘ foot it a little ’ in the old-fashioned dances 
— as bravely as we can ! ” 

“Yes — and, Jessica honey I” Sesooa crept 
close to her Camp Fire Sister, her voice a lov- 
ing croon. “ If the new Mrs. Deering shouldn’t 
really want you to stay on in the Deering Man- 
sion, as it’s called, why ! you can come to us — 
Father an’ Mother would love to have you — for 
a long visit. They’re so dear ! ” with a yearn- 
ing quaver in the voice. “Our home isn’t 

grand like the Deerings’ — but ” 

“ But ‘ your heart’s right there,’ isn’t it ? ” 

The two girls clung together upon the cloudy 
beach while the rising southwester footed it 
round them. 


CHAPTER XIII 


WIND AGAINST TIDE 
As bravely as we can ! ” 

J ESSICA chanted the words to her painted 
oars, bright, talkative oars that spoke 
through many vivid emblems painted on 
blade and handle by herself and her Camp Fire 
Sisters. 

A tongue of flame licked the dripping blade 
of one of them, mocking the water in which it 
was dipped, where Sesooa had gaudily painted 
her Camp Fire symbol, so characteristic of the 
little fire-witch who had mastered the art of 
getting fire without matches. 

“ Dear little Sally ! if I could love one girl 
of our Morning-Glory Camp Fire better than 
another 'twould be Sally, next to Olive ! ” So 
said the girl-rower to herself, answering the ap- 
peal of the spray-feathered flame. “ And ’twas 
so nice of her to go off and leave me to myself for 
a little while after I’d told her all my story — what 
I was crying about — I do feel a step happier for 
telling her I” smiling tremulously. “ Her going 
226 


THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 227 

will give me time for just half-an-hour’s row, 
alone, before dinner. And the water isn’t very- 
rough near shore, though there’s a wild tumble 
of tide out in the middle of the river. This 
sou’wester is a ripping breeze ! ” 

Thus the would-be designer of a painted 
window, enshrining the form of a Camp Fire 
Girl and consecrated to her ideals, soliloquized 
as she, Jessica Dee Holley, rowed briskly out 
from the Sugarloaf shore toward the wild- 
looking water that foamed and leaped at the 
broad heart of the tidal river. 

The tide was still so low that she had diffi- 
culty in shoving off her flat-bottomed dory 
which Captain Andy had put at the service of 
the girls, but the feat was accomplished at last, 
at the cost of wet ankles. 

“ Never mind ! I’ll change when I get back. 
I couldn’t have a row after dinner ; it’s going to 
‘ rain pitchforks,’ ” the girl had told herself as 
she finally took her seat in the boat. “ It’s 
breezing up for a good hard blow, too — sou’- 
westerly squall, maybe — a mighty bad squall 
when it blows off the Sugarloaf, over a hundred 
acres of tall sand-hills, so Captain Andy says. 
I sha’n’t go out far ! But I love the sea when it 
gets an angry rake on ” — again mentally quot- 


228 


GIRLS OF THE 


ing the captain. “ I like to feel myself mistress 
of it in a boat — I suppose that’s my great- 
grandfather coming alive in me I ” 

It would have been so much better if this 
one of her dead and gone relatives who seemed 
to have been a power could have “ come alive ” 
outside her, to smooth her way and steer her 
girlish course, so the rower thought, and rowed 
on thinking about him, his adventures on the 
deep, his life-saving achievements when he 
rescued the shipwrecked crews of other vessels. 
In high school she had read about Ulysses — 
hero of the greatest poem of antiquity — who 
was represented as being such a strong- hearted 
sailor, but Ulysses played second fiddle to her 
great-grandfather in her youthful imagination. 

Thinking of the latter now, of the gallant 
shoulders in the blue coat, the dimpled chin, the 
hair and eyes so like her own, as everybody 
said — thinking of these as depicted in the old 
miniature which she had left locked in her desk 
in the Deering Mansion for safety — lent a 
glamor to the hard, short sea, wildly tipped with 
foam, that was springing up about her boat. 

It might well be termed the sea, that part of 
the tidal river on which she was vaguely row- 
ing, for the sand-bar at the river’s mouth where 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 229 

the breakers combed and foamed and the 
brown, sandy point called the Neck, on which 
those breakers threw their white bonnets aloft, 
was less than a mile away. 

And what Jessica did not realize while she 
spun romances about that sailor-ancestor of 
hers and while she felt the daring drop of sea- 
blood inherited from him revel in her veins, 
was that the strong sou’ westerly wind blowing 
offshore, gaining tremendous force as it drove 
across the hundred acres of pale sand-hills that 
made up the Sugarloaf Peninsula, was sweep- 
ing her steadily down nearer to where the white 
fangs of those breakers were set in the brown 
throat of the Neck. 

She felt comfortably safe, for the water upon 
which she had launched her boat, and, indeed, 
for nearly half a mile offshore where she was 
aimlessly rowing about, though choppy and 
white-capped, was not dangerously rough, not 
so rough but that she could turn back and land 
again when she chose, for the Sugarloaf sand- 
dunes whose highest peak rose to two hundred 
feet above sea-level acted as a windbreak, so 
that the tremendous, ever-increasing force of 
the squally gusts only struck outside that half- 
mile belt of comparative calmness. 


2^0 


GIRLS OF THE 


How hard they hit when they did strike, 
lashing the middle of the river into a whirlpool, 
angered by the tide which had just turned and 
was feebly opposing them, the dreaming Morn- 
ing-Glory, exulting in being mistress of them 
and of her boat, did not know. 

She never meant to be foolhardy. She knew 
that to obey that stringent point of the Camp 
Fire Law : “ Hold on to Health 1 ” she must not 
only care for her body and steer clear of sick- 
ness when she could, but that over and above 
that, /ar more important still, she must avoid 
unnecessary and aimless danger, for in the 
latter case, nine times out of ten, she would im- 
peril not her own life alone, but some other life 
more mature and in the world^s estimate more 
valuable — as has sadly happened once among 
Camp Fire ranks — a life that might be nobly 
given in trying to save her. 

In what followed she was largely the victim 
of ignorance — because the word-pictures to 
which she had listened, painting squalls upon 
the tidal river near its mouth, fell so short of 
the reality — and of the absence of Captain 
Andy who had taken a party of other campers 
up the river in his motor-boat, as well as of her 
desire to work off, in rowing, the grieving de- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 231 

pression which had clung to her on the 
beach. 

She did fling it overboard ; as the choppy 
waves belabored the dory’s nose she presently 
laughed aloud as she chastised them with her 
painted oars, feeling that theirs was just rough 
play, the wild, boisterous sport of a young dog, 
proud of his strength, who shows all his teeth 
in his gambols, but will never close them upon 
his friends. 

She laughed apd chanted exultantly a line of 
some old sea-song while the gusts tore at the 
green pompon of her woolen Tam O’Shanter 
and tried to snatch the jaunty, tight-fitting cap 
itself off her head. 

Ouch ! 

** * The wind she blow a hurricane, 

By ’n’ by she blow some more ! * 

I’m having lots of fun with you!” she sang 
to them. “And now I guess it’s high time 
for me to turn back ; it must be almost dinner- 
hour; Gheezies, our Guardian, and the girls 
may be getting anxious about me I Goodness I 
how the wind is whipping up the fine sand of 
the dunes ; it’s hovering like pale clouds over 
the Sugarloaf.” 


232 


GIRLS OF THE 


This sand-fog spreading its storm-wings 
above the white hills that formed the back- 
ground of Camp Morning-Glory looked om- 
inous. She caught her breath ; it tickled her 
throat, suddenly, with a feather of fear. She 
wished she had not come out so far. 

“ * It’s a long, long way to yonder shore now ! 

But my heart’s righ^ there ! ’ ” 

she sang, all in a flutter, determined to keep 
her courage up, gazing shoreward toward the 
distant camp under whose sheltering roof her 
Camp Fire Sisters must be even now gathering 
for the midday meal. 

“ Whew I I must be getting into the really 
rough water, out toward the middle of the river. 
This — this is no joke ! ” she cried aloud wildly 
the next minute as a larger wave than any she 
had encountered yet not only boisterously 
showed its teeth, but seemed to fasten them 
cruelly in the dory, shaking the little boat until its 
planks creaked as she tried to turn it and drench- 
ing her from pompon to shoe-tip with spray. 

** Never mind : 

** * When perils gather round, 

All sense of danger’s drowned. 

We despise it to a man ! 

We sing a little and laugh a little. . . . 




MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 233 

And even while she tried to sing and laugh 
the Peril was upon her. 

A raving, squalling gust swooped out from 
that sand-fog swirling over the pale hills of the 
Sugarloaf ; it seemed to mount in delirium to 
the lowering sky — from which all the sun-rays 
had fled to hide — and kick over a bucket of 
fresh water there. Then it roared as it shook 
its wet wings over the sea ; its dripping tail 
struck the puny dory, just far enough out to be 
so struck with overwhelming force — and not all 
the strength of girl or boy, either, could stand 
or make headway against it. 

“ Oh-h ! there goes my green Tam.^^ It was 
such a heart-broken wail, such a sob, that the 
wild, wet gust must have had the heart of a 
fiend to withstand it and sweep the green Tam 
O’Shanter, which depended for safety upon the 
clinging fit of its woven wool, mockingly away 
from the boat’s side. 

It was beyond girl-nature not to make a frantic 
attempt to recover it — to row after it for a few 
battling strokes. 

But those wheeling strokes were the death- 
knell of safety, of safety’s last chance. 

The now terrified rower saw the pretty, warm 
head-gear, which she had bought out of the little 


234 


GIRLS OF THE 


pocket-money given her from time to time by 
Cousin Anne, dance upon the wave for a mo- 
ment — a green blossom upon a white tendril of 
foam — just beyond her reach. 

She did not see its soaked collapse ; she lost 
sight of it, of everything without and within 
her, except a blinding aching terror, for, all in 
a moment, the dory and she were whirling at 
the heart of a water-spout. 

The rain let loose by that last fierce gust 
drenched her sweater and short skirt. 

A second gust blowing with equal ferocity 
offshore, and yet another, turned loose by the 
descending squall, spun her boat out toward 
the whirlpool heart of the river where the baby 
tide, like a lion’s whelp, fought the tiger gusts. 

A reeling minute, the spray as well as the 
rain soaking and blinding her, the wind tear- 
ing loose her drenched hair, driving it across 
her face as if it would steal that, too, and whip- 
ping the breath out of her body, while the 
decorated oars wavered in her wet grasp that 
desperately tried to hold on to them, slipping 
between the racked row-locks which shook like 
chattering teeth I 

Then those mad gusts rushed on to continue 
their fight with the incoming tide nearer to the 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 235 

mouth of the river, dragging the dory in their 
train, or brother-gusts, following, spun and 
drove it, really it mattered not which — nothing 
mattered now — for the fierce, wet onslaught of 
wind had taken, not a girl’s streaming hair, in- 
deed, but something far more precious at the 
moment — one of her painted oars. 

“ Oh ! what’s to become of me ? I can’t row 
— I couldn’t, anyway I Will anybody see me 
from shore ? Captain Andy might put off in a 
boat to save me, but he’s away up the river ! 
The Boy Scouts I Their camp is far over 
among those other dunes, near the open sea, 
on the farther side of them I ” Wildly Jessica’s 
gaze swept the pale beach and dunes lining the 
opposite shore of the river from the Sugarloaf 
as she drew in her second symbol-painted oar, 
now helpless, while the wind gnashed at its 
emblems and the foam hissed Sally’s flame. 

Nowhere along the drab, rain-pelted line of 
beach, sandspit and tall dune on either side of 
her was there a sign of a boat putting off — any 
indication that somebody saw her plight and 
would make an attempt, at least, to rescue her. 

Indeed, along the whole coast of Massa- 
chusetts, north and south, no wilder or more 
lonely spot could be picked out than the mouth 


236 


GIRLS OF THE 


of this tidal river, left for nearly two-thirds of 
the year entirely to the harbor-seals and an 
occasional sportsman or professional gunner I 

“ Oh, ril be swept down — down — among the 
breakers on the bar I The girl’s fingers inter- 
locked convulsively as she cowered upon the 
middle thwart-seat of the boat, her eyes blind- 
folded by spray, her face working, discolored 
by fear, her wet knees groveling at the swollen 
roar of those breakers, heard even when they 
were farther off and invisible, among the crystal- 
line sand-mounds of the Sugarloaf. 

They crisped and curled and reared them- 
selves through transparent sheets of rain like a 
pale wall between her and another world. Be- 
yond them, even if by a miracle she should be 
swept past and through them alive, was the 
foamy vastness of the open sea where such 
frail things as a girl and a dory must surely be 
swallowed up in the tumult and tumble. 

“ Oh ! I carUt be drowned. I can’t be 
drowned^ Frightened to a frenzy, her bent 
knees stiffened, she made a movement to stand 
up in the wildly rocking boat, to shout, scream, 
shriek for help to one shore, or both — shriek 
her loudest against the roar of wind, rain and 
spray. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 237 


The fatal impulse almost overcame her. She 
was stumbling, staggering to her feet, when 
like a wave from nowhere, flooding her ago- 
nized consciousness, came a memory of Captain 
Andy’s instructions to her and her Camp Fire 
Sisters, how to act if ever, by any most unlikely 
chance, they should be caught in such a peril. 

“ Lie flat,” he said. “ Flat as a flounder I 
Slip down under the thwart-seats, make your- 
self one with the dory’s bottom. In such a 
‘ fearsome fix ’ a girl who couldn’t keep a grip 
of herself would stand up and holler 1 A Camp 
Fire Girl, with presence of mind, would know 
enough to lie flat ! ” 

Trembling, this Camp Fire Girl sank back 
upon the shaking thwart. She closed her eye- 
lids tight, the bursting tears mingling with the 
spray behind them. And the roar of the 
breakers was lost in the voice of prayer crying 
passionately in her own young heart. 

As on one July day, nearly two months be- 
fore, she had prayed desperately for physical 
strength to carry the dripping, bowing weight 
of a deaf-and-dumb child out of a playground 
pool, so now she prayed for soul-strength 
to carry her torch of presence of mind through 
these swirling, drowning waters — for self-grip I 


238 


GIRLS OF THE 


And self-control came to her. 

Down she slipped, down, until her shudder- 
ing body pressed the boafs bottom, until she 
lay on her back, flattened out under the drip- 
ping, shiny cross-seats. 

And with the obedient action came a gleam of 
hope, like a play of lightning through the rain, 
for Captain Andy had given a reason for his 
advice : that the dory being flat-bottomed the 
waves by themselves would never capsize her ; 
neither was it likely that she would ship enough 
water even among the breakers to swamp her ; 
that a girl in her — even though carried out to 
sea — would stand a fair chance, if she could 
only ‘‘ hold on to herself,” of being picked up 
when the squall was over. 

So Morning-Glory, flattened to a flounder — 
and wet as ever was flounder-fish yet — “ held 
on to herself ” and prayed and thought of her 
Camp Fire Sisters. 

“ I wonder if they miss me — they must — and 
whether they see the boat drifting down to the 
breakers on the bar ? ” she questioned as the 
roar of those breakers swelled to a crash in her 
ears, as she could see the white wave-tops rising 
furiously on either side of the boat, plucking off 
their ghastly head-feathers of spray and tossing 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 239 

them in upon her like a watery coverlet, while 
she lay on her back in her cradle, the boat’s 
bottom. 

That was just before a change came. 

Yes, her Camp Fire Sisters and their Guard- 
ian did see the driven dory, were at this mo- 
ment plucking their hearts out in anguish. 

They were rending the streaming heavens 
with their cries, scouring the sodden Sugarloaf 
to find another boat and somebody strong to 
go after her while the dearest girl in their camp 
was being swept in a curtained drive of rain, 
upon a roaring bed of waves, out toward the 
mouth of the roar, the Bar, where the breakers 
curled in an ecstasy, piling white on white, pale 
as climbing death. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE CASTAWAY 

LL of a sudden the girl so wildly cradled 



amid the breakers, with her wet, white 


face staring up from the boat’s bottom 
at the rain-washed, frowning sky, through 
sheets of spray, clear as rain, that swept over 
her, was vaguely conscious of some change in 
the forces that drove and whirled her. 

She stopped bailing out the water that threat- 
ened to fill the little dory, sat up and peered 
over the edge of her dripping cradle. 

Presence of mind grows like all other virtues. 
Just behind her head as she lay flat in the boat, 
stuck in a little wooden pocket of the dory, was 
what Captain Andy called a bailer-scoop, like a 
parlor coal-shovel, with no handle to speak of. 

Jessica, after she got a grip on herself and 
did the hardest thing that a girl could do under 
the circumstances — to lie flat, outwardly calm, 
and let herself be spun and whirled in the 
trough of the sea, driven whither the wind 
chose to carry her — remembered its existence. 


THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 241 

Slipping a hand behind her, she drew it out 
of the “ rising ” pocket in which it was stuck 
and began to ladle out the water on either side 
of her as one might ladle soup. 

She soon realized the wisdom of Captain 
Andy’s advice, for while she lay flat as a pan- 
cake ” or a flounder, the buoyant, flat-bottomed 
dory rode the waves, bow on, side on, stern on, 
any way on, without capsizing ; indeed, the 
little boat seemed to enjoy the wet dance. 

And, now and again, strange as it may seem, 
the girl felt a queer thrill of enjoyment or ex- 
citement shoot through her fear, although she 
was very much ashamed of the unconscious 
foolhardiness which had got her into such a 
plight as this and was at intervals tortured by 
the thought of how others must be suffering, 
now, on her account, her fellow-campers on the 
Sugarloaf, Guardian and Camp Fire Girls. 

There was one human companion who seemed 
to be near her, although long ago the seas had 
closed over him, just because her girlish imagi- 
nation saw in him such an heroic figure ; that 
was her great-grandfather. 

It was when she thought of him that she felt 
the thrill of exhilaration ; she was having an 
experience on a small scale of the brine-fighting 


242 


GIRLS OF THE 


perils amid which his life, as a sea-captain, had 
been passed and she grew more and more 
determined to meet it with a courage worthy of 
his great-grandchild. 

So, when the dory mounted on the back of a 
white-headed comber and then slid down into a 
hollow, shipping a small torrent of water over 
its side, so that she lay in a pool, her short 
skirt, green, woolen sweater and uncovered hair 
soaked, she raised herself a little cautiously and 
bailed “ for all she was worth,” knowing that 
the one imminent danger was that, between the 
united deluge of rain and wave, the plucky 
twelve-foot boat might fill and be swamped. 

Thus she managed to hold drowning at bay 
until she became aware of the before-mentioned 
change in the forces at war with her ; for one 
thing the rain grew lighter ; there was a break 
in the heavy clouds above; the sou’ westerly 
gusts seemed tired of roaring and chopping 
up the tidal waves ; they sank to a lull like 
a beating of weary wings in the air about 
her and over the wild bar just ahead of her 
boat. 

And then, all at once, the dory began upon 
a new figure in its watery dance to the tune of 
a new, piping whisper in the wind ; it stood still, 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 243 

shuddering and rocking, the brave boat, as if 
afraid to go farther, then it sidled this way and 
that, waddled like a stranded duck, waltzed 
with a wave as partner, backed like a perverse 
donkey, cut about every caper that a rudderless 
rowboat could devise. 

“ I do believe the wind is shifting I ” Jessica’s 
heart waltzed with the dory. “ It’s changing 
round to the east — I’m sure of it — if it’s with 
the tide, instead of against it, I may be swept 
back up the river again.” 

It was a dismaying prospect. Half an hour 
of such vagrant drifting as she had experienced 
was enough for a lifetime. 

** Or I may — I may be swept ashore some- 
where I It is hauling to the east ; I’m certain 
of it I ” 

She knew something about the four winds 
and their direction ; she had been keeping a 
scientific record of them for a month, together 
with the clouds, rain, fog or mist which, day by 
day, drifted over Camp Morning-Glory, in 
order to obtain a new honor-bead, a brown 
honor for “ Camp Craft,” to string upon the 
leather thong about her neck, worn on cere- 
monial occasions. 

If the wind blew from the east it certainly 


244 


GIRLS OF THE 


would not hurl her straight on until she struck 
the wild heart of the breakers on the bar. 

What it would do with her she didn’t know. 
As she felt the dory spun and jostled in every 
direction, lifted high upon the white shoulder of 
one wave which crowed as it tossed it to an- 
other, she just sat and cowered under the cold 
lash of the spray, her heart-strings like bow- 
strings strained almost to snapping, with wait- 
ing for watery developments. 

“ That — that’s what Captain Andy calls 
the Neck — that sandy point jutting out there I 
Oh, if the boat would only, once, stop dancing 
and touch bottom ! ” she gasped aloud, stretch- 
ing out her right arm toward that brown Neck 
of sand as if to encircle it. “ Goody I I feel in- 
side o’ me like a flooded attic, with everything, 
odds an’ ends of furniture, drifting round and 
bumping together.” 

Her teeth clicked upon the gurgle of hyster- 
ical laughter — partly a bumped sole — that ac- 
companied this soliloquy. 

Another bump ! A grounding shock I The 
dory was rubbing its nose against a long finger 
of sand slanting out from the Neck. 

A receding surf-wave dragged it back. But 
the girl was on her feet like a wet flash and 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 245 

stumbling forward over the cross-seats. Sob- 
bing, panting, she jumped over the rocking, 
receding bow right into the heavy, breaker- 
ridden surf dashing upon the Neck. 

It was a bold splash that sent the wheeling 
sea-gulls circling off, amazed. And it was a 
bolder wade through the shallow fringes of 
surf and on, ploughing on, through the wet, 
oozing sands to gain a foothold upon some 
firmer sands of the brown Neck. 

Once she turned and moaned a temporary 
farewell to the brave little dory, her watery 
cradle, that had stood so much. She knew 
enough about boats to be sure that no craft 
with a keel could have served her so well. 

‘‘ Oh ! I hate to leave you to be pounded 
some more,” she gasped aloud, in the wildness 
surrounding her. “ But you — you^ll be picked 
up later!” addressing the buffeted boat that 
was now, again, revolving in a maelstrom. 
“ The squall is pretty well over at last ; the sun 
will be coming out in a few minutes.” 

There was, indeed, a pale glint all over these 
drab and lonely sands (she had never been in 
so lonely a spot before) which seemed to herald 
such a friendly move on the sun’s part. 

The rain had entirely ceased. The wind was 


246 


GIRLS OF THE 


piping in an intermittent whistle, shrill, but low, 
before beginning to blow vigorously from the 
east. 

Between the roar of the surf-waves a silence 
fell in which she could hear her heart pounding 
as she dragged herself along in her wet cloth- 
ing, the water swishing in her canvas shoes 
which sank deep into the wet sands at every 
step. 

The silence seemed to whisper to her a word : 
Quicksands, She drew a lost gasp as she re- 
membered how Captain Andy said that a por- 
tion of the Neck with its flanking sandspits, 
as well as parts of the wet beach toward which 
she was heavily plodding, were, at low water, 
“studdled^^ with them — the tide was still far 
out. 

Terrified anew, she put down her hands and 
crept along, animal-like, on all fours, feeling the 
sodden sands ahead of her to try to find out 
whether they were firm or not — the sands that 
Captain Andy said could “ fool one ” with their 
traps. 

Now and again they oozed like a wet sponge. 
With difficulty she dragged her feet out. 

Would she ever reach a firm, fairly dry spot, 
real terra firma ? 



On, ploughing on, through the wet, oozing sands. — Page 245 



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MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 247 

She straightened herself, looking ahead as, 
silently, she put the weary question to her 
utterly strange surroundings. 

Courage I The beach for which she was 
heading was now only about thirty yards away, 
a narrow strip which, instinct told her, was 
generally bare even at high water. On the 
land side it sloped abruptly up into a row of 
sand-hills, the white dunes upon the opposite 
side of the river from the Sugarloaf Peninsula, 
which had long been distantly familiar to her 
eye, the dunes to some far peak of which Ken jo 
had signaled by means of a lantern and blazing 
broom. 

With the memory of that fire-talk, of the 
signaled message: “Safe at Camp Morning- 
Glory,’’ hope blazed in her as blazed the 
broom-handle. If she could only reach the Boy 
Scouts’ Camp somewhere among these dunes, 
all her troubles would be over. 

She felt a momentary qualm of vanity about 
presenting herself as such a wet and draggled 
castaway and put up a hand to her loose, 
streaming hair, to make sure it was still all 
there. 

“ Oh, what does it matter if I do look a sight 
after all I’ve been through ; they won’t care I ” 


248 


GIRLS OF THE 


she told herself impatiently. “Goodness! their 
camp must be nearer than I thought. What 
was tha-at? A — shout?” 

A shout it might be or a savage roar or the 
bellow of an animal ; it came from some point 
invisible behind the first line of sand-hills ; at 
first it carried no words with it. Then, as the 
girl stood quaking, wondering what sort of 
shore she had been cast on, came a second dis- 
tant cry freighted with a hoarse challenge. 

“ Hola 1 Hola 1 ” it said. “ Why forre you 
raise de Cain dere — dig, dig, dig — all time dig?” 

“Well! this is the very time to dig — after 
the rain — if you want to find anything,” re- 
turned a second voice, without the same ele- 
ment of guttural wildness in it that character- 
ized the first. 

“ They’re Boy Scouts^ digging for treasure — 
the treasure that Kenjo was questioning the 
Kullibigan fortune-telling top about ! ” 

Jessica leaped to the conclusion on the wings 
of an amazed and sudden peal of laughter that 
rocked her in her deep and spongy tracks. 

“ Who ever, ever heard of boys being so 
foolish ? ” 

But never was folly so welcome ! She had 
been about to drop warily upon all fours again, 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 249 


so as not to throw all her weight at once upon 
any treacherous patch of sand that she might 
come to. Now, she tucked her hair behind her 
ears and ploughed on boldly upright — no more 
harm could come to her, with those mirthful 
voices so near. 

She wished she could see the vain diggers. 
She stared hard at the sand-hill from behind 
whose wind-scarred, rain-gullied rampart re- 
sounded their prospecting shouts. 

She thought she must be catching the treas- 
ure-seeking contagion herself, or else that her 
drifting trip down-river to the bar had crazed 
her ; she did actually see, under the glint of 
the lightening sky, a tiny something that 
flashed like silver in one of the wet, riven 
grooves of that sand-hill. 

“ Pshaw I it’s only a piece of glass or a bright 
shell,” she thought. “ But it shines like a wel- 
coming eye.” 

She was eager, poor girlish castaway, to get 
near to anything that looked bright and wel- 
coming amid the wild solitude around her and 
more eager still to arrive within easy hail of 
the infatuated diggers hidden from her by the 
sandy pyramid thatched with long, rain-wet 
beach-grass, just beginning to turn yellow. 


250 THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 


Fixing her eyes upon the gold-green wave 
of that grass as it bowed to the careering gusts 
now lightly skipping out of the east, she un- 
thinkingly set her left foot down in a sandy 
hollow. That left foot reported that the sand 
there was firm. 

But the right had a different story to tell. 
As she heavily dragged that right foot out of 
its last footprint in which it had sunk more 
than ankle-deep, moved it forward in front of 
the left and let her weight come on it, there 
was a swishing, sucking, horrible sound in the 
sands beneath her. 

With all her might she tried to pull the right 
foot out again — and couldn’t. 

Neither could she dislodge the left one. 

With her very first struggle she sank above 
her knees in the spongy sands that still hissed 
as they sucked in water far down beneath the 
treacherous surface. 

“Help! Help I Oh-h, help! Pm — sink- 

ing I ” 

Her cry in its ghastly terror appealed to the 
sand-hills before her, to everything in heaven 
and on earth, as it rose shrilly above the roar 
of the surf on the Neck of the breakers upon 
the bar. 


CHAPTER XV 


IN THE QUICKSANDS’ GRIP 

r I A HAT was a girl’s cry, Stack I ” Kenjo 
I Red — Kenjo the youthful signal-man 

of the blazing broom performance 
— lifted his red head that flamed like a beacon 
amid the wet drabness of the dunes and stopped 
digging with a small shovel in the side of a 
sand-mound. “ A — a girl’s cry I ” he repeated, 
startled. 

“ By George ! it was. Somewhere the lace 
is screaming for help ! A woman — or a girl — 
must be drowning or sinking — somewhere ! ” 
Miles Stackpole jumped to his feet as he spoke, 
a ludicrously sanded figure ; he had almost tun- 
neled right through one sand-hill in a fevered 
search for the buried treasure which, according 
to local tradition, had been hidden by some 
hardy pirate of old among these wild sand- 
dunes. 

The mumbled tale of the aged hunter after 
one-legged hen-clams to the effect that, about 
a quarter of a century prior to this squally day, 

251 


252 


GIRLS OF THE 


certain gold and silver coins, a handful of them, 
stamped like no coinage ever current in the 
United States, had been picked up on, or near, 
this very spot, had infected Stack with the 
gold-fever, with a get-rich-quick delirium that 
showed in his strained eyes as he held his 
breath for a moment, trying to decide from 
what quarter came that feminine cry. 

Farther off a third figure stood at attention, 
too, listening with deep snorts, gulping breaths, 
like those of a woodland moose whose long ear 
is trained to catch a faint sound on the wind. 

A strange, lithe figure this third in a rough 
blue shirt that showed a brown, sinewy throat, 
high cowhide boots that reached to the knee, 
but were as destitute of heels as a Camp Fire 
Girl’s moccasins, and a bright red knitted cap 
fitting down over his head, with a scarlet 
tassel that flirted with the young gust from the 
east as he stood on a low sand-hill, alert to 
catch another cry. 

Hardly the interval of three seconds elapsed 
before it came, quivering with the same horrified, 
passionate terror as the first. 

At its first appealing note Stack started off, 
dashing up the tunneled sand-hill with long 
springs — like the wild deer that so often trav- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 253 

ersed these lonely dunes — and down the sandy 
pyramid upon the other side, landing, breath- 
less, upon the narrow strip of beach for which 
Jessica had been making. Thence he had a 
view of the broad, jutting point called the Neck 
and of its flanking sandspits, brown areas of 
sand on which the wild tide was slowly en- 
croaching, and of something sticking up like a 
dark stump from a sinister patch of sands, not 
thirty yards off, the sinking figure of a girl in 
a dark sweater, already nearly buried to the 
waist. 

Without a shade of hesitation Miles Stackpole, 
Eagle Scout, made a valiant dash for the wetter 
sands to reach that figure. 

The agonized victim saw him coming. In a 
vague way she recognized him. He had no 
green and red stripes, no rich points of color, 
embroidered merit badges, upon his sleeve to- 
day, no swooping eagle upon his breast. But 
he was the same tanned, eighteen-year-old lad 
who had taken the heavy deaf-and-dumb child, 
swamped by a cargo of green apples, from her 
dripping arms. -- 

“ Keep quiet ! Don’t move ! ” he screamed 
to her. “ More you struggle, laster you sink ! 
I’ll ” 


254 


GIRLS OF THE 


The brave pledge of help was never given. 
At the moment when he was within twenty feet 
of her> Jessica, transfixed, saw him rock and 
sway, saw one side of him grow suddenly 
shorter, beheld him, with admirable presence of 
mind, thrust his left leg out straight along the 
surface of the sands instead of setting its foot 
down,, and throw his khaki-clad body over to 
the left side, thus preventing his weight from 
falling upon the right leg which had already 
sunk deep. 

He was helpless, caught in a patch of watery 
quicksands worse, even, than that which im- 
prisoned her, seeing that the sucking sands 
gave way under the first pressure and let the 
bottomless water ooze in down deep beneath 
him. 

In that position he was such a strange, in any 
other circumstances would have been such a 
ludicrous, figure, swaying on one leg, with the 
other stuck out level, like a performing acrobat 
or a barn-yard goose, that a weird shriek of 
laughter, palsied by terror, rocked forth from 
the girPs throat. 

Since she had seen the advent of this friendly 
human being from the sand-hills her fear was 
not so distracted as it had been, at first, in the 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 255 

drifting boat ; whereas, if she had only known 
it, lying in a pool of water in a dory’s bottom 
among breakers was safety itself compared with 
her present peril. 

In another few seconds, however, she felt the 
very framework of her sinking body freeze and 
stiffen, her heart drop down — down — like a 
stone which the quicksands swallowed before 
they devoured the rest of her, for she saw that 
her would-be rescuer, caught by the leg, with 
his arms in their khaki sleeves helplessly flap- 
ping like brown wings, fingers clutching at air 
in a desperate attempt to preserve his acrobatic 
position, was as powerless to extricate himself 
as she was — and, inch by inch, she was silently 
sinking farther. 

It was as if an invisible monster, with a pain- 
less knack, was eating her, bit by bit, alive. 

She looked ' beyond the swaying figure, 
shrunken upon one side, and saw a bare red 
head ; it seemed to her that in some different 
world, ages before, she had seen that same red 
head on a boy outlined in the light of an oily, 
blazing broom. 

She shrieked to the head for help. But 
somebody fiendishly put a restraining hand 
upon the shoulder belonging to the head and 


256 


GIRLS OF THE 


thrust the boy’s figure back as it began to ad- 
vance toward her. 

And what was this third heartless being 
doing ? He was running away from her. 
Running up and down, this way and that, in 
frantic search, upon the beach. 

Then, all at once, she heard a shout from 
him, a sort of defiant bellow wild as the roar of 
the southwesterly squall in which her sufferings 
had begun, primitive as the thunder of the surf 
upon the bar : 

“H61a! Hol’up! I come I” 

Before that big shout the sucking sands 
seemed to tremble as death, at times, cowers 
before Life. 

It was Life, invincible Life, that was bearing 
down upon her now, as her glazed eyes dimly 
saw, a figure instinct with life, courage and 
resource from its high boots to the red, bobbing 
thing that danced like flame about its head as 
it ran. 

On his shoulder this strange being carried, 
like a feather, a ten-foot plank, a stout piece of 
driftage which in his wild hither and thither 
search he had picked up on the beach — the 
beach which, here and there, was starred with 
silvery driftwood, just as were the Sugarloaf 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 257 

dunes, much of it being traveled logs or planks, 
lumber-waifs, swept across the bay from the 
mouth of some Maine river. 

The red-crested being with the long thing 
on his shoulder came abreast of the brown 
manly figure still balancing itself upon one leg 
in the quicksands, — made a movement as if 
to lay down the plank as a bridge toward it. 

But the Eagle Scout, racked with the effort 
to keep his left leg stuck out level upon the 
yielding surface, while his right had sunk to the 
thigh, shrieked at him : 

“ Don^t mind me ! . . . Her T' 

And almost immediately thereupon Jessica 
felt two hoisting hands under her armpits which 
were only a few inches above the sandy surface 
now. A figure loomed beside her balancing it- 
self upon the long plank laid down over the 
watery sands, that brine-whitened plank sup- 
porting it in the same way that long snow-shoes 
will support a man upon soft snow where, with- 
out them, he would sink to his neck. 

And now began the desperate tug of war be- 
tween Life and Death, the fight for a girl’s life ! 

Captain Andy had classed it as the one feat 
of rescue next to impossible, to save a victim 
more than half of whose body had sunk in a 


258 


GIRLS OF THE 


patch of quicksands. At another time he had 
spoken of those sands which sucked in water 
beneath the surface as “ clinging like a cat,” a 
clawed wildcat, to anything on which they got 
a sucking hold. 

He had told how they would grip an upright 
board partially sunk in them as in a mould, so 
that no strength of his could dislodge it. 

But if the sands held on to their prey like a 
wildcat, the being upon the plank, with a 
ruddy tassel bobbing about his swarthy face, 
like a live flame flickering out from the fire in 
his body, had the fierce tenacity of a bull- 
dog. 

The froth came out upon his lip as he strained 
every sinew to raise the girl’s body an inch, to 
lift her by her armpits and shoulders. 

The breath fairly shrieked through his nostrils 
and open mouth with his hoisting struggles, as 
if he were a derrick with a whining pulley in- 
side him. 

He was a woodsman. In his veins coursed 
the irresistible life of the woods which when the 
sap runs freely in the hidden roots of a young 
tree will make it cleave the solid rock in order 
to find daylight and grow, if every other outlet 
is denied it. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 259 

It was like cleaving the granite rock to draw 
this girl’s body, three-parts sunken, back to 
daylight — a terrible duel between sand and 
man — in which Jessica felt as if her arms were 
being torn quivering from their sockets. 

But, glory to Life I the man won. 

Little by little the quicksands loosened their 
sucking hold ; inch by inch she was lifted until 
the sands had no further claim even upon her 
feet in their soaking canvas shoes. 

Then, free, she was borne along the bridging 
plank in the arms which had rescued her and 
on over the sands to the very first firm spot, 
where she was thrown down almost violently in 
the rescuer’s hurry to get back with the plank 
to the aid of the Eagle Scout whose distorted 
body could not maintain its crooked position 
any longer, even for dear life’s sake. 

Jessica felt a boyish hand helping her to her 
feet, presently, and guiding her along to the 
beach, she following blindly. 

The boy’s head was very red, his face like 
chalk. 

“ Oh ! ” he said, and she recognized Kenjo’s 
voice. “ Oh-h ! if Toiney hadn’t been here, 
you’d have kept on going an’ going — you’d 
have sunk out o’ sight in five minutes. I — I 


260 ' GIRLS OF THE 

couldn’t ha’ got out to you, after Stack got 
stuck ! ” 

“ ‘ Five minutes ! ’ ” The girl stopped and 
stared at him wildly, snatching her hand away. 
“ Oh, I should think you’d know enough not to 
say a thing like that — to me ! ” 

Her nerves gave way. She threw herself 
down on the drying beach and sobbed and 
sobbed as she had never cried even in childhood 
when, according to her Cousin Anne, she had 
the happiest child-disposition in the world, when 
she took her gaiety to bed with her, played a 
“ flower game ” with her mother at night and 
won the name of Morning-Glory. 

The Morning-Glory had been through too 
sore a storm to lift its head for a while ; it 
cowered, beaten and draggled upon its vine : 
in other words, Jessica, wet to the skin through 
her heavy sw eater, sand-coated from her shoul- 
ders to her canvas toes, curled down upon the 
beach, her cold cheek pillowed upon its safe 
sands and utterly refused to be comforted. 

In vain the two Boy Scouts assured her that 
she was all right now, that just as soon as she 
got over her fright they would take her to their 
Boy Scout Camp away off among the dunes or, 
better still, to another summer camp, not so dis- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 261 


tant, where there were women and she could get 
some dry clothes, because “ we don’t want to 
rig a Camp Fire Girl up as a boy ! ” said Kenjo 
half-bashfully. 

The overwrought girl paid no heed to them. 
At last as the nervous storm spent itself, she 
lifted her head a little and noticed sitting before 
her on the beach a figure in a blue shirt with a 
close-fitting red, tasseled cap upon its head and 
a long plank at its feet. 

It was Toiney, her lithe, sinewy figure rescuer, 
whom she had heard Kenjo laud as being 
“ queer stuff, but the stuff,” on the evening that 
Ken and his brother Scout who imagined him- 
self poisoned had spent at the girls’ camp on 
the Sugarloaf. 

Vaguely she remembered hearing Kenjo say 
that this Toiney was a French- Canadian with a 
little remote strain of Indian blood in him, who 
gave the Scouts lessons in wood-craft, trailing 
and tracking. 

Presently Toiney glanced round at her and 
muttered consolingly in tbe funniest jumble of 
dialect French and broken English : “ Tiens ! 
ma fille, t’as pas besoin to cryee — engh ? ” Then 
he began to relieve his feelings by softly abus- 
ing the quicksands. “ Ach, diable I she’s devil 


262 


GIRLS OF THE 


quicksanV’ he gurgled. “ She^shoid^ dam’ devil 
quicksan’ I ” the flicking of his red tassel lend- 
ing color to the curses. 

“ Oh 1 don’t call the — the quicksands ‘ she ’ 1 ” 
Morning-Glory suddenly sat up, indignant on 
behalf of her sex, a little hysterical spasm of 
laughter contending with her sobs ; because she 
was no pure, passionless flower, but a very 
human girl, it did her a rousing lot of good to 
hear the quicksands called bad names, after 
their treating her so meanly when the sea had 
cast her ashore among them. 

“ Engh ? ” Toiney grunted questioningly as 
he looked over his blue shoulder at her. “ Sapre I 
w’at time I’ll see you sink in her. I’ll t’ink I see 
two, t’ree girl go down ! ” 

“ Oh I one was enough.” Jessica’s laugh 
pattered now between her chattering teeth, like 
sunlit hail through rain ; she understood her 
rescuer’s description of the dazed horror in 
which he had sought up and down for a saving 
plank. 

“ How on earth did you come to be by your- 
self on that lonely part of the Neck — and so 
wet, too ? ” asked Miles Stackpole whose skin 
had not the golden hue at this minute that it 
showed when he worked for the resuscitation of 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 263 

little, deaf-and-dumb Rebecca ; instead it be- 
trayed a greenish tinge around the edges of his 
tan ; three or four minutes of being trapped by 
one leg in wicked quicksands, knowing that the 
other limb, stretched out along their sucking 
surface, was very slowly sinking, too, that he 
would certainly be swallowed up alive if help 
did not come, and quickly, was no enviable ex- 
perience. 

And he understood the peril better than the 
girl-victim upon whose sand-plastered, draggled 
condition he now looked with chivalrous pity 
while he questioned her. 

‘‘ I was out in a rowboat, alone, on the river 
when the squall came on ; I lost an oar — I 
hope the other one is in the dory still ; they 
were such pretty oars, all painted over on blades 
and handles with our Camp Fire symbols — at 
first I wanted to stand up in the boat and yell 
and yell — I was so frightened — for it was just 
frightfully rough ; it seemed every minute as if 
the waves would roll the dory over, topsy-turvy. 
But I remembered that ” — the girl’s voice was 
still broken and breathless — “ that Captain 
Andy told us Camp Fire Girls that if one of us 
was ever caught in such a predicament and 
couldn’t row, the only hope was to flatten one- 


264 


GIRLS OF THE 


self to a flounder in the dory’s bottom. Well I 
I did — and a pretty wet flounder I was.” 

“Then that sou’ westerly squall swept the 
boat down the river, I suppose, before the wind 
shifted round to the east,” suggested Stack. 
“ Were you cast ashore on the Neck ? ” 

“ I felt the dory’s bottom touch — then d’you 
suppose ’twould take me long to flounder out of 
her ? ” chuckled the girl. The Morning-Glory 
spirit, the little touch of humor, though draggled, 
was reviving in her. 

“If it hadn’t been for hearing your voices 
among the dunes I might have got along all 
right, for Captain Andy had warned us about 
quicksands and said ‘ they’d fool you,’ so I 
crept along on all fours, at first, after landing, 
teetering this way an’ that — you might have 
taken me for a seal if you’d seen me from a 
distance ! ” laughing shakily. 

“ But ’twas all so wild and lonely 1 ” with a 
gasp. “ I wanted to get where the voices 
were. And ” — a sudden recollection came to 
her, — she dimpled mischievously — “ I heard 
you shout to each other about digging — dig- 
ging for buried treasure — Kenjo told us what 
the very old man who was hunting hen-clams 
said about strange coins being picked up near 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 265 


here. ... I saw something bright, like 
silver, flashing after the rain, in the side of that 
sand-hill there — I thought I might get ahead 
of you. . . 

“ Where was it ? Stack was up like an 
arrow ; the gold-microbe working in him again 
as an antidote to the quicksands* scare. “ Can 
you show me where it was ? ’* 

He moistened his lips eagerly. 

Morning-Glory, appealed to thus, dragged 
herself, with his help, to her feet ; the eyes which 
were so like her great-grandfather’s in the old 
miniature searched gravely the side of the sand- 
pyramid. 

“No, I can’t — see — it — now. Ye-es, I do, 
though I There it is I ” She pointed trium- 
phantly to a sparkle in one of the wind-hollowed 
grooves of the wet sand-hill. 

“Where? Where? Yes, I see — I’m on to 
it now ! ” 

Stack was ploughing up the sodden sand- 
peak, in his drab gaiters and sand-coated khaki, 
only a shade less quickly than he had crossed 
it a few minutes before on hearing the girl’s cry 
for help. 

He reached the sandy niche of the “ bright 
shell,” stooped and picked up something. 


266 


GIRLS OF THE 


Those below saw him reel as he looked at it, 
as if he had a sunstroke. 

The next minute dunes, beach. Neck, sand- 
spits — the very quicksands themselves — rang 
with a new cry, wild, amazed, whooping, tri- 
umphant. 

“ Oh-h / let’s go an’ see what it is — what he’s 
found 1 ” gasped the girl who had seen the bright 
thing from afar. 

“ I guess you won’t find it easy climbing in 
those wet clothes I Here, let me help you I ” 
volunteered Kenjo, aflame all over with a curi- 
osity greater than Boy Scout had ever known 
before. 

Up the wet sand-mound they plodded. 
Toiney, picking up the dwarf-stemmed pipe 
which he had thrown away in his search for a 
plank, arose and followed them. 

“ My eye 1 Stack’s gone clean daffy over 
something,” panted Kenjo. 

Well might he gasp ; Miles Stackpole, Eagle 
Scout, was yelling like a Comanche, dancing 
like a madman among the wet, plumy beach- 
grass that thatched the tall sand-mound. 

” What is it ? What have you found ? ” The 
foremost climbers, hand in hand, were stum- 
bling, tripping — shrieking in a clamorous duet 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 267 

“ Oh 1 look and see. Our fortune’s made I 
There must — must be more where this came 
from ! ” 

That which the finder held out to his com- 
panions, that which the sou’ westerly squall had 
unearthed, unsanded, rather, upon the side of 
this wet sand-dune was a large, antique silver 
coin of a size and stamp such as neither Boy 
Scouts nor Camp Fire Girl had ever seen before, 
even in their dreams of fairy-land. 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE SUN-DOLLAR 

“ /fTY word! it’s stamped with a sun- 

|\/| burst on one side, on the other 
^ with a ship.” 

‘‘Yes, and with a burning mountain an’ a 
horn thrown in!” Kenjo’s tongue clicked 
against the roof of his mouth with excitement 
as he replied to the shrieked comment from 
Miles. 

“ A sunburst and a ship I ” Jessica clasped 
her hands wildly ; she too began to foot it upon 
the sandy hillside, to dance, not lightly as a 
foam-chicken, but heavily as a very wet and 
draggled one on the skirts of the still dripping 
vegetation. “ Oh, wasnH it queer that I should 
be the one to find it, for our Camp Fire Girls’ 
symbol is the Sun — and I have always loved 
ships ? ” She did not mention the source of her 
affection for sailing ships in the glamor that 
surrounded the figure of her great-grandparent, 
as she looked eagerly, greedily at the large 
268 



A LARGE, ANTIQUE SILVER COIN OF A SIZE AND STAMP SUCH AS 
NEITHER Boy Scout nor Camp Fire Girl had 
EVER SEEN BEFORE.— PttfirS 267 . 


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THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 269 


silver coin lying on Stack^s brown palm, wink- 
ing up at a fellow-sunburst in the sky where 
fair weather was beginning to reassert itself. 

But the Eagle Scout showed no inclination to 
hand over to her the coin. He only began to 
gesticulate and explain the situation to Toiney 
whose tassel had, forthwith, a bobbing spasm. 

“ Houp-e-la I Ciel ! he fin’ de dolla’ — de 
silvare dolla ’ — V argent blanch Now it was 
Toiney’s turn to waltz on the hillside, with his 
tassel. “ He fin’ V argent hlanc ! Ain’ he de 
smarty?” looking excitedly at Stack. “Ciel! 
I’ll go forre dig, too, me. Oh I 

Rond ! Rond ! Rond 1 
Petit pie pon ton ! ’’ 

With this wild roundelay, which had no sane 
meaning whatever, upon his lip, Toiney turned 
his clay pipe which had about an inch and a 
half of stem — his petit boucaney as he called it — 
upside down between his lips and fell to claw- 
ing at the sands with his swarthy hands as if he 
would root the very heart out of this rich sand- 
hill. 

That was the digging signal for the other 
three ! 

The Camp Fire Girl forgot that she was wet 


270 


GIRLS OF THE 


through and that others must be anxious about 
her. Stack forgot that he had ever roosted on 
one leg in quicksands. Ken jo forgot that he 
was Ken jo and possessed a red head. One 
and all they clawed with their fingers, dug and 
scraped with heels and toes, until the sodden 
sand-hill looked as if a regiment of roosters, 
each with an attendant flock of hens, had 
pecked and wallowed there for a week. 

“ There must — must be more where this coin 
came from ! ” Such was their battle-cry ; now 
and again one or other of them sounded it. 

Now and again, too, each one had a lucid 
interval of demanding to see the sunburst coin 
anew, to examine afresh its stamp and half- 
obliterated inscription. 

Miles — otherwise Stack — would then take it 
from his vest pocket and turn it over on his 
palm ; he did not want it to go out of his keep- 
ing, which Jessica privately thought was very 
mean of him, as she claimed the distinction of 
seeing it first and had paid dearly for that initial 
glimpse, too. 

“ And I persuaded myself it was only a piece 
of glass or a bright shell ! ” she exclaimed from 
time to time, having the feminine trick of re- 
verting to mistakes. “ Can you make out the 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 271 

date on it?^’ she demanded very practically 
after one such reversion. 

No, I can’t I ” Stack examined the coin 
more critically than he had yet taken the time 
to do in his frantic eagerness to find more. 
“ The last figures look like a 3 and an 8. But 
it might be 1638 or 1838 — date’s partly worn off. 
Houp-la I wasn’t it somewhere about 1638 that 
Captain Kidd was flourishing ? My history’s 
hazy. Gee — if we’re on the track of some of his 
buried treasure when other people have been 
digging for ages and consulting all sorts of 
fake fortune-tellers and never even got upon 
the trail of a hoard I ” 

‘*We consulted the Indian top.” Kenjo’s 
voice had a thrill of semi-superstition. 

Yes, but the Kullibigan couldn’t make up 
its mind which of us would dig up a fortune 
from the sands ; you came in on it, so did I, 
so did Arline — that’s nothing I” Thus Jessica 
laughed him down. ‘‘ Wait a minute ! ” She 
caught at Miles’s arm. “ I want to see if I can 
make out more of the inscription before you 
put it — the coin — back into your pocket again. 
You needn’t be so afraid that some one is going 
to snap it out of your hand ! ” haughtily. 

Thus shamed, Stack suspended digging for 


272 


GIRLS OF THE 


an age-long interval of a minute and held the 
coin on lingering exhibition, right and obverse 
sides. 

“ Oh I isn’t it a dandy sunburst, with stars 
above it?” So Jessica gloated over its ancient 
stamp. “ I can partly make out the inscription 
over the sunburst, too : it’s Repub — then some- 
thing else, and then PERUANA. I can read 
that clearly, but not the rest.” 

“Underneath the letters look like CUZCO,” 
spelled out Kenjo. “ And — oh I don’t be stingy, 
Stack ; let’s look at it a minute longer — and in 
the middle of the sunburst there are a few black 
dots that seem to be meant for the two eyes, 
the nose and mouth of a face — a queer sun- 
face I Oh I Ha! Hal” Ken’s boyish laugh 
rang out with a fire that matched his hair. 

“ Now for the reverse side : the ship is on 
that,” pleaded Jessica hungrily. 

“Yes, and the volcano and the horn — an’ 
something like a castle 1 ” muttered Miles. 
“ But we’re wasting time ! ” The coin van- 
ished again into his pocket. “ It’s me for 
digging, I tell you — digging hard 1 If we can 
find some more — a hoard of them — our fortune’s 
made. . . . I’d be glad to have my fortune 

made for me,” he continued, presently, out of 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 273 

the heart of a sand-spout ; “ I enter ' Tech ’ in 
the fall and for the next four years Fll have to 
work all vacation-time in order to push myself 
through — help pay college expenses. Oh, 
goody, if this coin and others would only lend 
me a boost ! ” 

“I need a ‘ boost, ^ as you call it, too; Til 
have to earn my own living when I graduate 
from high school, with no one to help me,’' 
quavered Jessica, shivering all over in her wet- 
ness, beginning to realize that, back of frenzied 
excitement, she was very clammy and ex- 
hausted. “ And — and I can’t earn my living 
in the way I’d like to do unless I get hold of 
some money I ” She fell to scratching like a 
wet hen. 

Stack looked at her through the sand-squall 
which he was raising ; this was the second time 
that he had seen her and on both occasions 
her clothing looked as if she had been dragged 
through a river, but he decided that if she were 
ever dry she’d be pretty, and if, after he en- 
tered Tech, he was duly elected to his chosen 
fraternity, she should be his guest during 
Frat week when the freshmen entertained their 
friends. 

Here he came out of fairy-land, fortune-land, 


274 


GIRLS OF THE 


for a moment, to hear the distant, strong chug, 
chug of a motor-boat upon the river above the 
Neck. 

“ If I get rich out of this. I’m going to have 
a motorcycle,” burst forth Ken jo, that distant 
chug shaping his dream. 

Rond ! Rond ! Rond ! ** 

chanted Toiney ; he did not open his heart 
like the young people, but as he incessantly 
clawed and dug, he had dreams, pathetic 
in their grandeur, about swaggering back 
to a rural spot near Quebec, where his old 
mother still clattered round in wooden shoes, 
as one who had made “ beeg fortune on United 
State’.” 

Never before were such silvery air-castles con- 
structed out of so little metal as that contained 
in one tarnished coin — a coin of a goodly size, 
however, larger than a fifty-cent piece, almost 
as big as an American dollar. 

Suddenly through the glittering halls of those 
castles in the air resounded an earthly shout 
that, momentarily, shattered them ; it was ac- 
companied by a swish of oars ; the chug, chug 
of the power-boat had ceased. 

“ Ahoy there 1 For heaven’s sake I have 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 275 

you all turned into a passel of hens ? It was 
Captain Andy’s amazed shout as he landed 
from his rowboat on a point of the sands which 
experience had taught him to be safe. “ Fm 
after one hen, to take her back with me ! ” 
pointing to the scratching Jessica. ‘^A nice 
scare she’s given us all — I found the dory bob- 
bing up the river. An’ by gracious ! my heart’s 
been in my mouth since. What in thunder 
are you diggin’ like that for ? Mad as March 
hares, all of you ! ” 

Humph I Perhaps we’re not so crazy as 
you think. Look at that ! ” With a lordly air 
Stack drew out the coin and held it forth in its 
silver beauty, stained and worn by long burial, 
for the captain to see, as he drew near. 

What d’you think of our madness now ? ” 
He gulped and gasped. 

‘‘ Why I Why I It’s one of those old sun- 
dollars ! ” Captain Andy, receiving it upon his 
own palm and turning it over (Stack was not 
afraid to trust it to him)^ looked pleased, highly 
pleased, and interested, but not wildly carried 
away as befitted one who held the first-fruit of a 
fortune in his hand. 

One of those old Peruvian sun-dollars from 
the wreck that took place here between sixty 


276 


GIRLS OF THE 


an’ seventy years ago, when I was a small 
boy ! ” he exclaimed again. ‘‘ It’s a handsome 
coin, all right ! But if you dig till all’s blue. 
I’ll warrant you’ll never find another of ’em, or 
if you should, ’twould be only one at a time an’ 
far between ; the river isn’t giving back enough 
of them together to make anybody rich ; an’ the 
river only got one bag of those coins when the 
old brig went to pieces I ” 

“Sun-dollarl Wreck I Brig! What wreck?” 
The challenging cries were hurled at him by two 
stiffening, defiant boys and one clucking, 
scratching girl. “ Come to think of it, that old 
clam-hunter did mumble something about a 
wreck I ” added Stack in crestfallen reflection. 

“ Yes, it’s goin’ on for seventy years ago, 
now, that a sailing vessel, a brig from South 
Peru, which had many bags of these an’ other 
Peruvian coins, both gold an’ silver, aboard — 
was rich in specie, as they say — was wrecked in 
the bay, outside the bar. The gale drove her 
up the river ; I’ve often heard about it ; my 
father was one o’ the men who put off in row- 
boats to rescue the crew an’ they did save ’em 
all, though ’twas night, and saved most o’ the 
money-bags, too. But one bag of coins fell into 
the river, when they were lowering it in the 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 277 

dark into a boat. Folks dragged the channel 
with nets for it afterward, but that river-chan- 
nel,” pointing but toward the middle of the 
heaving tide where his motor-boat rocked, 
moored to a stump-buoy, ‘‘ is so ‘ studdled * up 
with hollows an’ gullies that you never can re- 
cover anything from it that it doesn’t give up of 
its own accord, when wind and tide make it.” 

Captain Andy looked from the sunburst coin 
to the three young faces — sorry at heart that 
with his cruel crowbar of truth he must shatter 
their castles — and at Toiney digging still, dig- 
ging patiently on. 

“ Storm-wind and tide did make the river-bed 
give up a few of those coins, three or four, 
maybe ; they were picked up near this spot by a 
man I know a long time after the wreck took 
place. Now ! you’ve found another, but I 
guess that’s all you’ll find if you dig till Dooms- 
day. This is a pretty souvenir, though I 
Who’s to keep it ? ” Captain Andy turned the 
coin over in his hand and looked at Jessica who 
had hopelessly given up scratching and was 
ready to accompany him to the rowboat, thence 
out to the waiting motor- boat and from there, in 
a quick run, back to the Sugarloaf, her Camp 
Fire Sisters and Camp Morning-Glory. 


278 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ I saw it first,’’ proclaimed the girl, eagerly 
eyeing the sun-dollar. 

“ I picked it up,” said the boy, with greed in 
his claiming eye — in spite of the fact that he 
was eighteen years old and an Eagle Scout. 

He had risked his life for the girl by dashing 
out among the quicksands at her cry. He had 
come very near giving it by sinking altogether 
when he refused to be rescued first. And yet 
he was unwilling that she should have the 
treasure trove, the sunburst coin. He took it 
from Captain Andy’s hand, from Captain Andy 
whose code of chivalry, now and always, might 
be summed up in three words : “ Skirts go 
ahead ; ” in land speech, “ Ladies have the pref- 
erence 1 ” 

“ I don’t care I He can keep it if he wants 
to!” 

Jessica tossed her head with its loose tangle 
of wet hair. 

So indignant was she at this greed for posses- 
sion, this covetousness on the part of an Eagle 
Scout, or any other Scout, that she marched off 
down to the rowboat, ahead of Captain Andy, 
without thinking of saying good-bye to Toiney, 
her rescuer, and without as much as casting a 
glance at the miserly Miles who had played the 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 279 

acrobat on one leg amid quicksands for her 
sake ! 

“ Well I if he isn’t the Meanest Thing ! ” So 
spoke Betty Ayres as she twirled an egg-beater 
upon the following morning before a glowing 
stove in the kitchen of Camp Morning-Glory. 
“ Eagle Scout, indeed 1 I’d like to whip him 
instead of these yolks.” 

“ Yes, keeping that beautiful, big old silver 
coin after you had seen it first I And he 
seemed so — so different when he worked over 
that dumb child to bring her to I ” flamed Sally. 

“ Oh I you never can tell about boys ; you 
never can understand them,” sighed Arline, 
airing the time-worn complaint of each sex 
about the other. 

“ I understand a lot about them ; I’ve three 
brothers and I cured the Astronomer,” main- 
tained Penelope sturdily. “ I doubt if Tender- 
foot Tommy would have acted like that.” 

“ A letter for somebody 1 A Scout gave it to 
me to give to you ! ” Captain Andy — other- 
wise “ Standing Tall,” ducked his head through 
the broad screen door and handed a thick 
envelope to Jessica, who looked pale, red-eyed 
and snuffled a little, but, beyond that, was none 


28 o 


GIRLS OF THE 


the worse for yesterday’s experiences. ‘‘The 
chap who gave it to me got up early an’ rowed 
over from the opposite dunes. There’s some- 
thing in it, I think I ” added Menokigabo, with 
a twinkle in his eye. 

“ Girls ! it’s the coin — the silver sunburst 
coin!” Jessica tore open the envelope ; inside 
were some hastily written lines, without any 
conventional beginning : 

“ The sun-dollar belongs to you. You saw 
it first. Sorry I behaved like a chump yester- 
day ! I have put your initials in a little mono- 
gram under the sunburst and got in the date of 
this year, too, when it was found, in tiny figures 
at the side. 

“ I found out what the name-letters were 
from Kenjo who says that he heard your name 
in full on the evening that he signaled to us 
from your camp. 

“ A Scout is honorable 1 

“ Miles.” 


“ Well — if he isn’t splendid ! ” 

“ He must be a fine fellow I ” 

“ We want to meet him.” 

“ So you will when the Camp Fire Girls of 
the Twin- Light Tribe give that party at the 
hotel on the mainland ! ” 

Captain Andy withdrew, smiling to himself 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 281 


at the new feminine flutter, the abrupt change 
of tune. 

But if that isn^t just like a boy — this from 
Betty — “a boy’s one idea of owning anything 
is to carve initials upon it I I believe he’d 
scratch them on the pearly gates of heaven if 
he could only find his way there and set up a 
claim for himself or somebody else I ” 

“ Never mind ! Isn’t it a beautiful old sun- 
burst coin ? ” Jessica winked away a bright 
drop of moisture as she passed the sun-dollar 
round for inspection. “ It really was quite too 
awfully good of him to give it up, wasn’t it ? ” 
with a little catch of delight in her throat. 

“I believe that, in his place. I’d have been 
tempted to think that possession is nine points 
of the law,” laughed Olive. “ But for a Camp 
Fire Girl belonging to a society whose general 
symbol is the sun, that silver sunburst coin is 
the loveliest souvenir of her camping-out time 
— so appropriate ! ” 

“ So appropriate,” echoed its lucky possessor, 
smiling like the gayest morning-glory that 
ever fluttered in a morning gust which awoke 
it to the sun, “ so appropriate that do you know 
what I’m going to do, girls?” rising on ecstatic 
tiptoe. 


282 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ I know ! ” nodded fair-haired Betty with 
the air of a cynic. “ YouTe thinking of getting 
Captain Andy to bore a little hole in it and 
wearing it round your neck for a while. Tess, 
now I 

“ Ha I Betty means to insinuate that if a 
boy’s one idea of owning a thing is to carve a 
name or initials upon it, a girl’s first thought 
is to use it to make her look more * fetching ’ — 
eh ? ” Sally pointed an accusing finger at 
Betty. “ I wouldn’t be sarcastic if I were you, 
‘Holly’!” 

“But that’s just what I did think of doing 
with it,” owned Morning-Glory, subsiding to 
the soles of her feet again. “ With the excep- 
tion of my Fire Maker’s bracelet,” holding up 
her rounded right arm, “ and my fagot ring, I 
have little or no jewelry, as the rest of you girls 
have. If it was only forty or fifty years ago, 
now, I could wear that beautiful old miniature 
of my great-grandfather — it’s set in real gold. 
As I can’t, I’d like to wear this,” gloating over 
the large silver disc from which Miles had re- 
moved the stain of long burial ere he finely 
engraved or, rather, scratched the girl-owner’s 
monogram upon it with the sharpest blade of 
his penknife so skilfully that it really did not 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 283 


mar by incongruity the quaint beauty of the 
radiating sunburst, having the queer old sun- 
face, like a microscopic mask in the center. 

“ Well, Pd wear it as a pendant if I wanted 
to I Tve got a thin little silver chain, Jess, 
that ril lend you while we’re here,” volunteered 
Arline. “ Pouf I ” blowing scorn on Betty’s 
sarcastic scruples. “ Why I it’s hardly any 
bigger than the silver medals which some of 
the high school girls wear in the spring in 
honor of their boy friends, in athletics, who 
have won them on the track team or in the 
high jump or some other event.” 

‘‘To be sure ! People will only think that I 
have a friend who came in second in the mile 
or half-mile* at ‘ interscholastics.’ ” Morning- 
Glory fluttered gaily again upon the highest 
tendril of joy’s vine. “ I paid dearly for being 
the first to see the old coin,” with a momentary 
shudder. “Now I may have the pleasure of 
wearing it to that party which the Twin- Light 
Tribe is going to give at which we’ll play old- 
fashioned games — dance old-fashioned dances — 
all the girls who don’t belong to our ‘ Morning- 
Glory Tribe ’ will just keep guessing and guess- 
ing as to what sort of new-fangled athletic 
medal it is 1 ” 


CHAPTER XVII 


A MONOGRAM ON A COIN 

B ut no Camp Fire Girl or Boy Scout, 
either, who assembled at the invitation 
of the Twin- Light Tribe at an hotel 
upon the mainland of the Massachusetts North 
Shore, indulged in any wild or random guesses 
about the large, silver disc, curiously stamped 
with a sunburst, which rose and fell with the 
excited breathing of one happy girl of the 
Morning-Glory Tribe when she put in an ap- 
pearance at the long-expected party. 

The Twin-Light Tribe was an enthusiastic 
band of Camp Fire Girls who had taken their 
name from the twin lights, the two golden, 
saving eyes of a lighthouse guarding their 
shore. 

Being eager for the obtaining of new honor- 
beads to string upon the leather thongs about 
their girlish necks, they had arranged to give 
a large party at which the girls and boys 
would be equal in number, where all the youth- 
284 


THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 285 

ful guests should take part in at least two old- 
fashioned dances — the boys being instructed 
on the spur of the moment by the girls if they 
could not skilfully foot it already in the old- 
time figures of “ Pop Goes the Weasel,” 
“Chorus Jig,” or any two more stately Ameri- 
can dances popular long ago. 

For this achievement every participating 
member of the Twin- Light Tribe was to re- 
ceive a red, white, and blue honor for patriot- 
ism, a distinction which might have been ex- 
tended to the father of one of them who put 
the ballroom of the seaside hotel of which he 
was manager at the service of the Camp Fire 
Girls for a certain evening and who lent gener- 
ous aid, too, along the lines of refreshments. 

The large room was radiant with electric 
bulbs disguised as Chinese and Japanese lan- 
terns which pointed many a rainbowed finger 
of light at the silver sun-dollar gleaming upon 
Jessica’s breast when she entered the hall. But 
nobody, neither the benevolent manager nor 
the guests, all — with the exception of Scout- 
masters and Camp Fire Guardians — under 
twenty, was ignorant by this time of the de- 
tails of its strange discovery^ 

Two of the Boy Scouts, going for milk to a 


286 


GIRLS OF THE 


farmhouse beyond the dunes where their camp 
was situated, upon the evening of the most 
terrible and exciting day in the life of one 
Camp Fire Girl, Jessica Dee Holley, had told 
about the finding of the old coin in the wet 
side of a sand-hill. 

The farmer from whom they procured their 
milk reported the news at the nearest post- 
office when he drove round with his full cans 
next morning. The postmaster telephoned it 
to a newspaper reporter. Inside of thirty-six 
hours practically the whole of Wessex County, 
Massachusetts, knew that another of the old 
sun-stamped Peruvian pesoSy lost from the 
South American brig wrecked off the coast 
nearly three-quarters of a century before, had 
been found by two Boy Scouts and by a girl 
who had been swept down the tidal river in a 
squall in an opposite direction to that taken by 
the drifting brig which the furious gale of long 
ago had driven in from the bay, over the bar, 
to break to pieces in the river. 

Even the few resident guests still staying on 
at the hotel, now that September had set in, 
had heard or read the story, too, touched up 
by a reporter’s imagination, and were anxious 
to meet the heroine of the drifting dory acci- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 287 

dent who to-night wore the beautiful old peso^ 
or dollar, on a silver chain around her neck. 

“ There^s a man out there in the hotel cor- 
ridor who says he’s interested in old coins. I 
was talking to him just now ; he’s like all the 
rest; he wants to see the sun-dollar,” remarked 
Miles Stackpole, Eagle Scout, to the coin’s 
possessor, looking down at the silver sunburst 
dangling upon the breast of her white dress. 

At this patriotic party the Scouts, by request, 
wore their uniform. Miles was resplendent with 
all his merit badges below the service stripes 
upon his right sleeve ; the American Eagle in 
silver swooped from the red, white and blue 
ribbon hanging from the silver bar upon his left 
breast. On his collar was embroidered in dull 
gold B. S. A. : Boy Scouts of America ; together 
with the number of the troop to which he 
belonged. 

Other lads from his camp numbering over 
twenty, including Kenjo and the fat Astronomer, 
looked debonair and smart in their khaki uni- 
forms, too. 

But the Camp Fire Girls had, for to-night, 
abandoned their leather-fringed khaki ; they 
were not in ceremonial dress ; each wore a 
conventional party-frock or the fairest apology 


288 


GIRLS OF THE 


for one which she happened to have brought 
with her to camp, the girlish costumes ranging 
widely from Olive Deering’s frilled yellow silk 
in which she looked like a chrysanthemum, the 
first of the season, to Sally’s white skirt and 
orange smock, minus the saucy Tam — wherein 
she was again the little Baltimore oriole of the 
city playground — and to Penelope’s white duck 
skirt and “ fancy ” waist which the girls had 
between them fashioned for her, having ruled 
out her old “ black and white warbler ” attire 
with the faded girdle. 

“ There I the piano is just striking up ‘ Pop 
Goes the Weasel ’ now,” went on Miles after an 
interval during which Jessica had expressed a 
happy willingness that the hotel guest who was 
interested in venerable coins should have his 
desire gratified and examine the sun-dollar. 
“You and I are to dance this together in the 
leading set. After it’s over, we’ll put the sun- 
burst coin on exhibition.” 

“ Pop Goes the Weasel ! Dear me ! the last 
time I danced it was on a public playground 
with that poor little deaf-and-dumb foreign child 
whom, between us, we rescued from drowning 
in the shallow bathing-pool,” murmured Morn- 
ing-Glory, in fancy seeing little Rebecca’s big- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 289 

eyed face under the Chinese lantern above her. 
“ Ha ! there's Captain Andy looking in at us, 
with the hotel guests ; he paid me the ‘ dandiest ' 
compliment that day, so the girls told me " — 
laughing merrily — “ he said I was so light on 
my feet that I danced like a Mother Carey 
chicken on a foam hill ; what d’you think of 
that ? ” 

“ Well, I bet you do I I can tell better, 
though, after the Weasel has popped,” laughed 
Stack, as this leading couple in the leading set 
stood with arms arched for a gay little dancer 
(it happened to be orchard Kitty who had been 
duly instructed beforehand in the popping 
figures) to pass beneath. 

Never did a weasel pop to a finish more 
triumphantly ; never did the large handsomely 
decorated room where fashionable seashore 
visitors held revel during the summer echo and 
reecho to happier laughter, more joyous dance- 
cries ; never certainly did its decorative panels 
smile upon a company so fraught with promise 
for the future of their native land as this as- 
semblage of Scouts in khaki and their Camp 
Fire Sisters. 

“ Now, when you've rested, we’ll exhibit the 
peso, the Peruvian sun-dollar, to all who want to 


290 


GIRLS OF THE 


see it ! ” suggested Miles when the dance was 
over and he was fanning his partner with his 
broad hat, to be worn later when the Boy 
Scouts were to give an exhibition, go through 
some drilling and signaling ‘‘ stunts ” for the 
entertainment of their hostesses. 

“ Fm rested now, but don’t show it off to too 
many people at once,” pleaded the girl shyly. 
“ If they’re hotel guests bring them one by one 
or two at a time — I hate facing a crowd 1 ” 
Stack divined that she did not want to run 
the gauntlet of many questions about her ex- 
periences on the day when she had been a 
castaway on the Neck and espied the coin- waif, 
from the wreck of long ago, flashing from its 
wet niche in a sand-hill. 

“ All right ! ” he agreed. “ We’ll hold a re- 
ception for the sun’s face on the sun-dollar, 
though if I was the sun I’d boycott Peru forever 
— never shine on ’em again — for caricaturing 
me like that I I’ll usher guests in one by one ; 
ladies first, then that lawyer-chap to whom I 
was speaking a while ago who’s interested in 
coins.” Miles nodded toward a tall, thin man 
lounging just inside the doorway of the room. 

“ Did he tell you he was a lawyer ? ” 

“ Not in so many words, but he said that he 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 291 

was only resting at this hotel for a day or two 
and that, then, he was going on to old New- 
buryport on the Merrimac River, thirty or forty 
roundabout miles from here, on a quest that 
was not exactly legal business ; he did not say 
what sort of search it was, but why should he 
mention that it wasn’t a legal matter if he 
wasn’t side-stepping his own line, eh?” beamed 
Miles, fanning more vehemently with his Scout’s 
hat. 

“ Newburyport I Old Newbury port — the only 
Newburyport in the United States 1 ” sighed the 
girl. I have been wanting all summer long to 
go there ; my great- gran’ father lived there once ; 
at least, he used to sail out of Newburyport on 
his long voyages to the West Indies ; he went 
all round the world sometimes.” 

This was the gayest evening of her life, the 
most utterly happy one since she had lost her 
parents, yet as young Stackpole went off to 
summon the lawyer who was “ side-stepping his 
own legal line ” by taking up with some matter 
outside it, she felt as if her heart shrank until it 
was the size of a peanut, squeezed by poverty’s 
iron hand ; she had not been able even to afford 
the train fare to Newburyport, a town in the 
same State, without imposing on Cousin Anne. 


292 


GIRLS OF THE 


“ Never mind, it won’t always be so ; I’ll 
soon be independent, earning money in some 
way, even among a storm of typewriters I And 
I’ll always have the silver sunburst to remind 
me of this happy summer and that, as a Camp 
Fire Girl, I’m a daughter of the Sun,” she mur- 
mured to herself even as her hand went up to 
the back of her neck to unfasten Arline’s silver 
chain, in order that the stranger might examine 
her coin-pendant closely. 

“ It certainly is a most beautiful specimen of 
Peruvian coinage,” that stranger was exclaim- 
ing presently after Miles had duly introduced 
him to its owner. “ Do you mind if I take it 
over there to the farther end of the room where 
there are some electric lights that aren’t dressed 
up like Chinese mandarins, so’s to see it better?” 

“ Not at all I ” they agreed and followed him 
like happy children. Miles and Jessica. 

Several of Jessica’s Camp Fire Sisters of the 
Morning-Glory Tribe, hovering around their 
sweet-faced Guardian, also migrated to that far 
end of the long room where there were no 
swinging, red-and-yellow, mandarin lights ; so 
did two or three of the Scouts, with Captain 
Andy, looming massive in this hall of revelry, 
at their heels. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 293 

‘‘Yes, I don’t think these South Peruvian 
pesos were issued after 1838,” remarked the 
lawyer, his words dropping clearly into the 
heart of the lull between the music and dances. 
“ I can make out the inscription above the sun- 
stamp fairly well : ‘ Repub Sud Peruana^ and 
that grotesque little sun-face — like a microscopic 
All-hallo we’ en face — at the heart of the sun- 
burst. But — but what is this fresh engraving, 
if you can call it so, beneath it ? ” 

“ My initials in a tiny monogram,” laughed 
Jessica. “ He put them there ” — glancing up 
at Miles — “ in honor of my seeing it first.” 

“ What Philistinism ! What youthful arro- 
gance ! ” gasped the lawyer half under his 
breath. ‘‘ Why, it spoils the ancient stamp I ” 
angrily. 

“ Not so ! I made too slick a job of it for 
that I ” maintained the eighteen-year-old Scout, 
with a chuckle, not caring in the least that an 
elderly lawyer who was “ side-stepping his own 
job ” should denounce his act as that of a spoil- 
ing Philistine ; nobody else of the group or 
throng, now augmented by almost every young 
person in the room, exactly caught the stran- 
ger’s words and meaning, with the exception of 
the Camp Fire Guardian. 


294 


GIRLS OF THE 


** ril wager no silversmith could have done it 
better with the tool I had, the fine blade of my 
penknife,” boasted Stack, peering down at the 
minute, intertwined letters under the sunburst ; 
‘‘ you see they were easy letters to weave into a 
monogram : J. D. H. : Jessica Dee Holley I ” 

“ Dee ! Dee I Is your middle name Dee ? ” 
The irate lawyer’s expression changed as if a 
flash of lightning from the electric bulbs over- 
head struck him. “ Dee ! ” he reiterated. “ It’s 
not a common surname ; I have, as yet, only 
got upon the track of a few families of that 
name. And I can’t — I can’t go about asking 
every one I meet what his or her middle name 
is, if it happens to begin with D.” He looked 
appealingly at Jessica, shifting the old coin 
upon his wrinkled palm. 

“No, of course not.” Morning-Glory did 
not know whether to laugh or hide ; she thought 
he was slightly deranged and edged a little 
closer to Miles. 

“ I’m going on to Newburyport on the Mer- 
rimac River in a day or two, to see whether I 
can, in person, get upon the trail of any Dees 
whose ancestors lived there,” went on the man 
who was on a “ side-stepping ” quest. 

“Well! you needn’t go any farther,” pro- 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 295 

claimed Stack excitedly, his Boy Scout’s 
trained detective-instinct leading him to be- 
lieve that there was “ something in the wind.” 
“ Do some pumping — I mean questioning — 
here first ! Miss Holley’s middle name is Dee 
and she has just told me that her great-grand- 
father — on her mother’s side, I suppose — came 
from Newburyport. He was a sea-captain.” 

“ A sea-captain ! ” More lightning struck the 
lawyer, so it seemed ; he made a few prancing, 
forward steps. “ Was he drowned ? ” 

“ Yes, in the year 1840, so Mother told me.” 
There was the germ of a sob in Jessica’s an- 
swer ; she did not take kindly to abrupt ques- 
tioning about this heroic, handsome ancestor 
whose memory she idolized. 

“ What was his name, his full name — may I 
ask?” 

“ Captain Josiah Flint Dee, sir.” The great- 
grandchild spoke the name proudly, although 
she was beginning to tremble and shiver, she 
didn’t know why ; was it possible that the an- 
cestor whose dimpled chin, blue eyes and live 
smile — preserved on ivory all these years — 
had been the living companion of her loneliest, 
sorrowfulest hours, was really — really — coming 
alive, at last, in some deed of his, to bless her ? 


296 


GIRLS OF THE 


Not for an instant was she so disloyal to the 
gallant shoulders and the fine head in the old 
miniature as to imagine that any deed of his 
could shame her. 

So she threw back her own brown head and 
looked the queer questioner, who was still hold- 
ing her sun-dollar upon his palm, straight in 
the eye as she added : 

“Yes, my great-grandfather’s name is writ- 
ten in a small Bible that I have, which was 
printed very long ago, in which an s is formed 
like an f,” with a catch of the breath. “ My 
grandfather’s name is written on the fly-leaf, 
too, and my grandmother’s and my mother’s.” 

“All named Dee! Well! Well! And I 
might never have found that out, might never 
have thought of questioning you — for, of 
course, I can’t go about asking people what 
their middle names are — if it hadn’t been for 
your monogram scratched on this old coin.” 

“‘Youthful arrogance,’ eh?” quoted Miles 
with a wink, flinging the words back in the 
lawyer’s teeth. “ I call it a heaven-sent in- 
spiration if there’s anything back of your ques- 
tions, sir I ” The Eagle Scout darted an eagle 
look, but a respectful one at the same time, at 
the elderly legal stranger. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 297 

“ If there is any purpose back of ^em, I say 
go ahead an' drive it — no more bushwhacking 
— you’re upsetting the little girl and holding 
up the dancing — spoiling the party !” threw in 
Captain Andy with a paternal look at Jessica 
who was now leaning against her Camp Fire 
Guardian. 

“ Why I of course there’s a purpose back of 
them,” replied the lawyer with dignity. “ I am 
in possession of knowledge that may be of bene- 
fit to this young lady to whom I was so acci- 
dentally introduced through looking at the coin 
she found. But in order to determine beyond 
doubt whether — or not — she really is heir to a 
trifling old legacy, I must ask a few more 
questions.” 

“Heir! Legacy! Gee/^* Tenderfoot Tommy 
Orr licked his lips as he hovered upon the skirts 
of the ring which had formed around Jessica, 
his short, fat neck thrust forward, his gaze 
slanted inquiringly upward at one and another 
of the now thoroughly excited group. “ Leg- 
acy ! Gee whiz ! That sounds slick,” puffed 
the Astronomer. 

“ I’m sure I’m on the right track at last,” 
murmured the lawyer, mentally squinting 
backward at certain letters of inquiry he had 


298 


GIRLS OF THE 


written during the past few weeks to people 
whose surname was Dee in various parts of the 
country, which had brought no satisfactory re- 
sults. “ But there may be other heirs or heir- 
esses beside this young lady — other descend- 
ants of Captain Josiah Dee. Are you an only 
child ? ” he inquired of Jessica. 

“Yes. I had a little brother who died when 
he was a baby.’^ 

“ And your mother — she was an only child, 
too?'’ 

“ Yes. And my grandfather was an only 
son ; at least he was the only one to grow up ; 
he ran away from home, that is, went away 
soon after he was twenty on hearing a rumor 
of gold being found in California ; that was 
while my great-grandfather was away on the 
voyage from which he never came back ; he was 
lost in a storm with his ship Tke Wave Queenr 
The Wave Queeit ! Hal We’re getting 
on.” The lawyer rubbed his palms together 
upon the old sunburst coin as if he were pet- 
ting it. 

“Your grandfather was a gold-hunter, eh? 
Did he own the little old Bible you speak of 
with the names on the fly-leaf? That would 
come in handy as evidence.” 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 299 

“Yes; my mother said that was the only 
thing he took away with him, beside his outfit, 
when he started for California, that and a little 
miniature painted on ivory of his father ; both 
had belonged to his mother — my great-grand- 
mother.’^ Jessica’s voice faltered a little as she 
leaned against the Guardian of the Camp Fire, 
Miss Dewey ; lawyers did seem to do no end 
of bushwhacking, beating about the bush ; at 
the next leveled question, however, she straight- 
ened up ; her eyes shone. 

“ Did you ever hear of your great-grand- 
father’s saving the life of a Boston merchant or 
petty trader, named Orlando Norton, at sea?” 

“ No, but I know he saved a whole lot — of — 
lives,” with a proud quiver in the voice. 

“ Well 1 I may come to the point at last and 
tell you that on one of his voyages he did save 
the life of Orlando Norton whom he found cling- 
ing to a spar in mid-ocean, after the passenger 
ship on which he was aboard was wrecked. 
And this Orlando Norton was grateful ; he 
wasn’t a rich man, but he left Captain Josiah 
Dee a small legacy at the time of his death 
which occurred while your great-grandfather 
was away on his last voyage from which he 
never came back. So the legacy went un- 


300 


GIRLS OF THE 


claimed. The Judge of Probate ordered it to 
be deposited in a Boston savings bank until 
some claimant turned up. None has ever done 
so — efforts were made at the time to reach your 
grandfather, but they failed — so the sum has lain 
there for nearly seventy-five years, swelling and 
multiplying at compound interest, doubling it- 
self every twenty-five years or so.’’ 

Dead silence as the legal tones ceased; 
among the girls not a hair ribbon stirred ! As 
for the Boy Scouts, only the Astronomer’s 
padded gasps, sounding as if they emanated 
from a throat lined with cotton- wool, made 
themselves heard ; others were holding their 
breath. 

‘‘ Great guns ! Fd like to ask how this 
matter of a legacy came to be hauled forward 
again after such a long time had elapsed?” 
Captain Andy suddenly thrust a massive 
shoulder into the midst of the group. 

Simply because of late years there has been 
a law obliging all banks to publish, at intervals, 
a list of their unclaimed deposits in leading 
newspapers. Probably if Miss Jessica Dee 
Holley and her parents weren’t living in New 
England, they never saw that list, but I did, 
and not having much legal business on hand, I 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 301 

thought I’d manufacture a little by trying to 
look up heirs for two or three of the oldest 
legacies still unclaimed.” Thus the lawyer 
explained his “ side-stepping quest.” He was 
silent for a moment, gathering breath for a 
dramatic climax ; then he stretched out his 
right arm and put the old sunburst coin, with 
its dangling chain, back in Jessica’s hand. 

** Here is your sun-dollar, my dear,” he said 
in fatherly tones ; “it has brought you a very 
strange piece of good fortune ; through your 
initials on the coin — which irritated me at first 
— I was led to question you ; and, now, I 
haven’t the slightest hesitation in saying that I 
am sure you are the heiress to that old legacy 
— a debt of gratitude to your great-grandfather 
for saving a life — and that, with my assistance, 
you can claim it at any time.” 

“ Oh I Oh I Oh-h ! ” These bomb-like ex- 
clamations, fired off into the stillness of the 
great room with its decorated panels and 
portly, gaudy lanterns, were for a minute the 
only sound to be heard. “Don’t faint — ^Jes- 
sica ! ” pleaded the Astronomer then. 

“ How much is the legacy ? ” Miles spoke 
huskily. 

The lawyer cleared his throat. “ Well ! money 


302 


GIRLS OF THE 


looked bigger in those days, I suppose, and the 
merchant was a comparatively poor man,” he 
prefaced ; “the original legacy was only three 
hundred dollars.” 

“ Three hundred I He didn’t put a big price 
on his life.” Miles kicked vehemently at a 
chair. 

Every one’s elated countenance fell — with the 
exception of the new-found heiress who was 
thinking proudly of that deed of her great- 
grandfather — three hundred dollars : it was 
better than nothing I But it was a very small 
windfall which had fallen among them with a 
very big thud and they resented the noise it 
made. 

“ Ah I but you forget ” — a smile crept over 
the lawyer’s face — “ you forget that the legacy 
has lain in that savings bank at compound 
interest, compounding and compounding for 
nearly seventy-five years ; I can’t compute ex- 
actly its present amount at a moment’s notice, 
but I know that it is in the neighborhood of 
twenty-five hundred dollars ; that isn’t such a 
bad little nest-egg for pin-money, eh,” smiling 
at Jessica’s white face, “even when my small 
fee is deducted ? ” 

Silence again. 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 303 

“Twenty-five hundred The shriek came 
from Sesooa. With a spring Sally flung herself 
upon the “modest heiress,” flung her arms 
about her. “ Oh ! Jessica,” she cried. “ Jessica, 
darling I you can go to a school of art — to a 
dozen schools of art, if you want to, now I ” 
wildly. “ She thought she must earn her living 
as a stenographer in a business office ! ” Sally 
flashed round upon the company, a smocked 
flame. “ And — and she didn’t want to — though 
Fd like it well enough — because she loves color 
and she has the makings in her of being an art- 
ist, a designer like her father, painting beauti- 
ful windows with saints’ heads — and things I 
She says girls do that, sometimes, now. An’ 
she wants to — but she must have an education 
— and to design a Camp Fire Girls’ colored 
window, some day, if ever we girls get a grand 
National Building I ” 

Sally had soared to a hill of imagination from 
which she crowed upon the listeners like a ver- 
itable flame-bird, mocking coherency. 

“Oh! Jessica, why didn’t you tell me that?” 
whispered Olive Deering. 

“ I couldn’t — Olive lovey !” 

The heiress in a modest way looked very 
white and trembling. “ I always felt — I always 


304 


GIRLS OF THE 


felt that my great-grandfather lived in some 
way I she breathed. Tears oozed out between 
her eyelids. 

It was a crucial moment. Then Tenderfoot 
Tommy Orr grew splendid. With the rolling 
gait of a very fat boy, chin thrust out, he 
ploughed through the circle and seized Morn- 
ing-Glory’s hand in both of his. 

“I say! you just come an’ have some fruit 
punch,” he commanded, waving his Scout’s hat 
toward a far-away table. “ Waiter has just 
brought it in ! Legacies an’ stuff are all right, 
but Vm— parched P' in the same tone that he 
had proclaimed how he was poisoned. . . . 

‘‘I’m too short for you to take my arm, but you 
can hang on tight to my hand I ” he added in 
Jessica’s ear, as he steered her for the distant 
table. 

“You’re a good Scout, Tommy,” applauded 
Miles huskily. “ Goodness I to think that one 
of us, in a way, did dig up a fortune from the 
sands after all — or something like it ! ” 

“ Miles ! ” The Guardian of the Morning- 
Glory Camp Fire seized young Stackpole’s arm 
as if he were her son or as if she had known 
him all her life. “ Miles — that’s your name, 
isn’t it — for pity’s sake ! get hold of the hotel 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 305 


pianist who has been playing for the dances; 
ask her — ask her*^ — breathlessly — “to strike 
up Portland Fancy or the Virginia Reel, some- 
thing, anything lively, and set the girls to 
dancing.^* 

“Yes, let them work it off through their feet ; 
if not we’ll have a scene I . . . Jiminy 

twisters ! I want to make a scene myself ! ” 
added Miles Stackpole, Eagle Scout, stopping 
to whoop in the act of obediently crossing the 
room. “ / want to wrestle somebody : I want 
to get out-of-doors and yell and yell — and yell 
— and kick over the Man in the Moon 1 ” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE TORCH BEARER 

** That light which has been given to me 
I desire to pass luidimmed to others ! ” 

T he voice which repeated this high 
desire, the purest the human heart can 
know, was Jessica’s. 

It was a voice which thrilled and trembled 
just as it had done over six months before when, 
by the lakeside Council Fire, Morning-Glory 
had given her girlish pledge to tend, even as 
her fathers and fathers’ fathers had tended, the 
sacred heart-fire of humanity — kernel of its 
hearth fire, too — the love of man for man, the 
love of man for God. 

That she been tending it in lowly places 
where, otherwise, that flame would have been a 
feeble flicker, where in one case it would have 
been hidden under the heavy bushel of a deaf ear 
and silent tongue in a child’s head, was shown by 
the presence of four little girls whom she had 
made happy once a week for three months, thus 
306 


THE MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 307 

meeting one of the requirements for gaining the 
highest rank among Camp Fire Girls. 

This group of children, aged about eight or 
nine years, was known by the beautiful name of 
a Bluebird Nest, called after the azure harbinger- 
bird whose appearance in spring, as a great 
naturalist says, is the signal for sky and earth 
to meet, as their hues do in his plumage, in 
other words a call for them to cease their winter 
strife and prepare for summer. 

And these little human Bluebirds, now in the 
early spring of life, were preparing for the sum- 
mer of being Camp Fire Girls ; that is three of 
them were ; the fourth, the deaf-and-dumb 
Rebecca of the city playground, was so handi- 
capped and retarded by her affliction that no- 
body could prophesy what her future would be ; 
suffice it that, at present, she was happy I 

There was a sparkle in those patient, purple 
eyes of hers which held no ray when the girls 
first saw her on the public playground, lacking 
a little partner in the folk-dance. Of all the 
lights which the new Torch Bearer, Jessica, 
whose Camp Fire name was Morning-Glory, 
might pass on undimmed to others from the 
happy glow within herself and from the lamp of 
those Ideals which, like a wise virgin of the 


3o8 


GIRLS OF THE 


parable, she kept trimmed and burning, none 
would be more heavenly than that torch first 
kindled in a dumb lamb’s heart. 

‘‘ But, do you know, I don’t believe that little 
’Becca is going to be dumb always,” remarked 
Miinkwon, Arline, arching the future with her 
rainbow symbol, when the ceremony of initiat- 
ing one member of the Morning-Glory Camp 
Fire into the highest rank was over, when the 
girls were seated in a semicircle on the floor, 
before a blazing Council Fire. “You may re- 
member,” addressing the crescent company, 
“ how the playground teacher said that, once, 
when the children were all yelling ‘ Swing ! 
Swing ! ’ at the tops of their voices — and those 
foreign children can scream both in their own 
language and every other — Rebecca seemed to 
catch some sound or vibration and said ‘ swing ’ 
plainly, too I ” 

“ Oh I even if she remains deaf, she can, no 
doubt, be taught to speak, later on, by means of 
the oral method or lip-reading,” suggested 
Gheezies, the Guardian of the Camp Fire. 

“ Yes,” Arline spoke passionately, “ this even- 
ing, before the signal came for us to march in, 
and take our places round the Council Fire, I 
knelt beside her for five minutes saying ‘ Glory * 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 309 

over and over, forming it big, with my lips close 
to her face ; I want that to be the first word she 
says, if she ever does begin to speak, in honor 
of Welatawesit, our Morning-Glory,” with a 
moist glance at Jessica, ‘‘who rescued her from 
drowning and kept the torch of life in her little 
body!” 

“ Yes, and who first : 

Called the Bluebird through her window 
To sing its song within that dumb heart,” 

quoted Gheezies. “ Does Miinkwon remember 
the blank verse effusion in which she celebrated 
that playground incident ? ” 

“ Of course I do I But nobody has yet got 
sufficient poetic steam up ” — Arline laughed — 
“ as to write a really dramatic poem telling how 
she was saved from drowning in two feet and a 
half of water by a Camp Fire Girl and Eagle 
Scout.” 

“ Oh ! we’ll leave that to the future airy flights 
of Kask, the Blue Heron,” chimed in Betty, 
smiling at Olive who sat facing her in this 
Council Fire crescent, grouped indoors upon a 
January night, around a ruddy hearth. “ Blue 
Heron will surely try out her poetic pin-feathers, 
some day ; it was the fear of losing them, I 


310 


GIRLS OF THE 


think, of being reduced to hissing instead of 
hooting, like that poor captive owl, which first 
induced her to become a Camp Fire Girl.’’ 

“ That may be — partly ! ” laughed Olive. 
‘‘ But all last summer while we were camping 
on those white, fairy Sugarloaf dunes, I was too 
much taken up with exercising my wings in 
other directions to think about little rhyming 
flights. And ” — gasping slightly — “ since we’ve 
been back in the city I’ve had plenty to do, 
too — with my father’s marriage and all that I ” 

Blue Heron, as she gazed into 'the fire, at the 
red velvet of its blazing, hickory back-log, was 
thinking dreamily of the pure wing-power for 
which she had prayed on that evening, more 
than six months before, when she sat, as a 
spectator, at a lakeside Council Fire, that she 
might soar into likeness to her mother. Of late, 
with a few human tumbles, she had been wing- 
ing upward on pinions of tact and unselfishness 
that brooded gracefully over the crisis in her 
home life when her father gave a new mistress 
to the household where she had hoped to reign 
in that mother’s stead. Thus she helped Sybil 
to adjust herself, too. 

In consequence, Olive already loved her 
stepmother whom, prior to the marriage, she 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 31 1 

hardly knew, all the more because the new wife 
evinced a cordial desire that Cousin Anne and 
Jessica should remain members of the family 
even after the latter graduated from high school, 
that is if the education in art which she was to 
pay for out of her wonderfully discovered legacy 
could be carried on in the city of Clevedon. 

And what was the new Torch Bearer, who 
had been initiated as a Fire Maker a little over 
six months before, thinking of as she, too, gazed 
into the velvety red of blazing hickory and birch 
logs, topped by a blue crest of rippling flame, a 
delicate fluorescence ? 

Chiefly she, Morning-Glory, was dwelling on 
that old, saving deed of her great-grandfather’s 
which had arisen out of the past to bless her (to 
justify the feeling of her lonely hours that, some- 
how, in some way, he lived to companion her), 
to enable her to follow in her father’s footsteps, 
by and by, as a designer of stained-glass glories, 
this bringing her in feeling nearer to him, too. 

Already Jessica, or Welatawesit, wore upon 
her fringed sleeve a Shuta National honor 
(Shuta meaning to create) awarded her by the 
highest council of the Camp Fire Girls for 
her design — crudely imperfect as yet — for a 
beautiful stained-glass window, representing 


312 


GIRLS OF THE 


the figure and ideals of a Camp Fire Girl. 
A window which, at some future golden date, 
might filter and glorify the daylight as it 
streamed into a National Temple dedicated to 
American girlhood, to its desire to preserve a 
romantic savor of its predecessor upon this soil, 
the Indian girlhood, whose poetic folk-lore, 
dress and customs seemed in danger of vanish- 
ing until the Camp Fire Girl stepped upon the 
scene to unite in her captivating person the 
poetry of the past, the progress of the present ! 

From the honor emblem upon her khaki 
sleeve Jessica’s young gaze wandered back to 
her beaded leather necklace and to the large 
silver coin, stamped with a sunburst which she 
still, upon certain occasions, wore round her 
neck, the ancient sun-dollar with her monogram 
minutely engraved beneath the radiating rays, 
which had been so instrumental in linking her 
with her ancestor’s life-saving deed. 

“Won’t it go beautifully with your Torch 
Bearer’s pin which has a rising sun as part of 
the design on it?” suggested Penelope who, 
to-night, as she dreamed by the Council Fire 
in ceremonial dress which had a “ poetizing ” 
effect on her, as Sally said, looked transformed 
from the Penelope of the restless gate, creating 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 313 

a tingling atmosphere about her that, according 
to Betty, could be felt a mile off. 

‘‘Yes, I feel like a true child of the Sun, 
wearing both of them ! And isn’t it a strange 
coincidence that the old coin found by a Camp 
Fire Girl — or first spied by her — should be 
stamped with a sunburst?” Morning-Glory 
fingered the sun-dollar, silver-gilt in the firelight. 
“ I have been reading up about Peruvian coin- 
age,” she went on reflectively, “ and I find that 
the sunburst stamp with those funny little black 
dots representing a grotesque sun-face in the 
center is a relic of the sun-worship of the old 
Incas, former inhabitants of Peru, who carved 
the sun’s face on everything.” 

“ I’ll never forget that lawyer’s expression 
when it dawned on him that the date of this 
year and a girl’s initials on the sun-dollar, 
which at first he regarded as an insult to its 
stately inscription and ancient stamp, were 
actually proving a clue for him to find an heir 
to one of the old legacies for which he was 
looking up claimants.” This amused remark 
came from Gheezies, Guardian of the Fire, who 
sat on the right of the blazing logs. “ I’m sure 
that Morning-Glory will go down to history in 
that part of the country as the heroine in the 


314 


GIRLS OF THE 


case of the most remarkable legacy that ever a 
girl fell heir to ! ” 

“ Yes, and think of the wild excitement of the 
Twin- Light Tribe over having such a dramatic 
scene take place at their party ! ” gasped Ruth 
Marley, whose Camp Fire name signified Music 
and who had the G clef in her head-band. 
“ Why ! their Christmas letter to us was full of 
it. I’d like to hear that sisterly epistle again.” 

So would 1 1 And 1 1 And 1 1 Also the 
letter from Captain Andy — our * Standing Tall ’ 
— in which he speaks of the present he’s send- 
ing us 1 ” came in tones of laughter from one and 
another of the fourteen beaded maidens seated 
round the Council Fire, while the four Blue- 
birds, nestling near, played happily with their 
dolls, which Morning-Glory, in her one afternoon 
a week spent with them in the room of a 
Children’s Friend Society, had taught them how 
to dress. 

“ Oh ! Captain Andy used to feel badly be- 
cause we had no bows and arrows last summer 
(we’ll have to practice archery before we ever 
camp out with him again) to go with our In- 
dian dress and not even a harpoon, as he used 
to say jokingly, in case ‘ a school of blackfish 
came in,’ ” laughed Sesooa. “ And so he’s 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 315 

sending us a spear, the sword of a swordfish 
which he killed himself and polished up — I 
mean he polished the sword and polished off 
poor fish. He says we can harpoon hearts 
with it ! 

“ It will go well with our painted ‘ buffalo 
robe ’ bearing the figure of a Camp Fire Girl ; 
we’ll hang it on the wall, then it will make our 
room like an Indian lodge, with hunting 
weapons,” romanced Morning-Glory, gazing 
round the pretty, firelit meeting-room in the 
Guardian’s house, dedicated to the use of the 
Morning-Glory Camp Fire which bore none but 
the slenderest resemblance to a red man’s lodge, 
with its pretty window-curtains made, embroid- 
ered and hung by the girls’ own hands, its 
leather table-cover, sofa pillows and Record 
Book bound in sheepskin. 

Into almost every article in that room, with 
the bare exception of the furniture, had been 
woven the personality of some member of the 
Morning-Glory Tribe who met there, who had 
helped to make or decorate it — that girlish 
tribe being likewise responsible for keeping the 
room swept, garnished and in order. 

There — there is another letter which I want 
to read to you, as it’s connected with our camp- 


GIRLS OF THE 


316 

ing days — and with the worst adventure I ever 
had in my life!’^ went on Jessica breathlessly, 
after a minute or two. ‘‘ Or, rather, I think I’ll 
let Gheezies, our Guardian, read it 1 ” The girl’s 
face was ‘‘ swept,” now, by a variety of expres- 
sions ranging from a sunny gust of amusement 
to the dark semblance of a shudder wafted by 
memory across its buoyant brightness. 

Gheezies, holding a candle near to the page, 
smudged, blurred and strangely covered with a 
scrawl of handwriting, read slowly and with 
difficulty, mentally supplying punctuation and 
other conventional marks : 

“ Ch^:re Mad’selle, dear Frien’ : 

“ It gif me grate plaisir to rote you dese 
line. Yes’day w’en I go on top o’ post-office 
w’at you t’ink I see, heem littel box. Ciel ! I 
am so glad I feel lak’ cry. Ach ! la jolie 
montre — de silvare — I haf not de word — I am 
so fool . . 

Here the queer scrawl broke off indefinitely. 

Underneath the letter was continued, as fol- 
lows, in a fine bold hand over several pages : 

** Toiney sent me this ‘ specimen scribble * in 
which he has tried to thank you for the silver 
watch you sent him in memory of the day when 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 317 

he pulled you out of a patch of horrible quick- 
sands while I revolved on one leg, unable to get 
to you. 

“ Fm so glad you remembered him with it, at 
Christmas — the watch came out of the legacy, I 
suppose — and you may bet he was tickled when 
he went ‘ on top of post-office,’ meaning into it, 
and was presented with the registered box 1 I 
don’t know how he got so far with his letter, 
some one must have helped him, for I didn’t 
think he knew enough English to say Boo ! 
straight. . . .” 

Here the reading was interrupted by a gasp 
that was almost a sob from Jessica ; straight Eng- 
lish had not been necessary to translate the fire 
of the woodsman’s arm which forced the “ devil 
quicksands ” to relax their sucking grip upon 
her body. 

** He sent me the letter, asking me to fix it up 
with lots of patn ^ — my expression, of course — 
excuse slang ! . . .” 

That means all the nice speeches you can 
think of I ” interjected Penelope explanatorily. 


So here goes ; I enclose ‘ dese line ’ from 
him and add my comments — and sundries ! 

“ I have been plugging away for dear life at 
Tech and working through the Christmas holi- 


318 


GIRLS OF THE 


days. It means a stiff grind for the next four 
years if Tm to take my B. C. E. degree — Bach- 
elor of Civil Engineering — at the end of that 
time. 

“ Have you decided yet in what School of 
Design you’re going to learn how to paint 
Saints’ heads on glass ? More power to the 
legacy ! 

“ Gracious ! when I think of how that rip- 
ping sou’ westerly squall which swept you in 
the dory on to the Neck made the sand-hill 
‘ cough up ’ that old sun-dollar and of all that 
it brought you, I want to yell and yell, like 
a madman. I’ll wager that Ken jo does, too ! 
And didn’t the Astronomer play up at the 
party when he thought you were going to faint 
or cry ? Good for Tenderfoot Tommy ! 

“ Thank you for the help which you Camp 
Fire Girls are giving us by selling tickets for 
our big Boy Scout Rally which takes place this 
month ! 

“ Hoping to see you soon, 

“ Your friend, 

Miles Stackpole.” 

** That’s a nice letter from the Eagle Scout,” 
commented Gheezies, handing the sheets back 
to Morning-Glory, “ and Toiney’s mongrel 
scrawl is worth keeping. Now for the best 
letter of all which I have kept for the last on 
this our first meeting after Christmas when, as 
we agreed, we are talking over our camping 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 319 

experiences, remembering absent friends and 
dwelling on the messages they sent us I This 
is from Kitty — Kitty Sill — our Camp Fire 
Sister!” The Guardian jubilantly waved an 
envelope. “ In it she tells of how she, little 

chicken-hearted, orchard Kitty, who ” 

‘‘ Who, as Captain Andy used to say, was 
‘ shy as a long-billed curlew M ” interjected 
Olive in low, laughing tones. ‘‘ I beg your 
pardon, Gheezies, for interrupting I ” 

** Yes, how ‘ shy ^ Kitty has been instru- 
mental in starting another Camp Fire group 
among the girls of her scattered neighborhood 
and has induced their school-teacher to act as 
Guardian. Now, what do you suppose they’re 
going to call this new Camp Fire ? ” 

“ ’Twouldn’t be Kitty if it wasn’t original,” 
chuckled Morning-Glory. “ It’s altogether too 
bad that they can’t enroll Mary-Jane Peg I ” 

“ They’ve decided to call it the Five-Smoke 
Camp Fire after the old farmhouse in which 
Kitty lives because that house is still sometimes 
described in their locality as the house of the 
big chimney or the farm of the five smokes 
owing, no doubt, to the fact that in early days 
after the house was built about two hundred 
years ago, Kitty’s ancestors could afford five 


320 


GIRLS OF THE 


fires going together, while other families of the 
settlers had only one.” 

“ The ‘ Five-Smoke Camp Fire ’ ? Isn’t it a 
great name? A dandy name I ” burst from one 
and another of the crescent-group applaudingly. 

“ It is. And as there’s no smoke without 
fire, let us hope that it will kindle a five-pointed 
blaze in the world in honor of Wohelo : Work, 
Health, Love. Now, I’ll read you Kitty’s 
letter I 

“You see, she says that they, the members 
of this new Camp Fire circle, have just received 
their Charter from Headquarters,” added the 
Guardian softly when the reading was finished. 
“ It seems to me that it would draw us near to 
them, to our Camp Fire Sisters everywhere, if 
we were to unite in repeating the beautiful 
words of that Charter which hangs, framed, 
upon our wall.” 

“Yes! Oh, yes! Let us!” One girlish 
face after another was uplifted to a glint of 
framed glass above them through which the 
leaping flame of their Council Fire picked out, 
here and there, a colored capital. 

Like a rolling wave that begins with a mur- 
mur and rises to a mountain, their voices broke 
in unison upon the shores of the fire island ; 


MORNING-GLORY CAMP FIRE 321 

** This is your Charter, Make it live^ 

And find here hidden within its page 
The Deeper Meaiiing — 

The right to join the Circld s Sisterhood^ 

Your Hearts to beat in touch and tune with 
theirs ; 

The right to kindle at their Flaming Fire 

Your own^ and see within its Gloiv 

The Spirit-Flame of Work^ Love-ordered, , , P 

Higher soared the crest of the Council Fire, 
illumining many a fair young face, unlocking 
with its key of flame the circle of individual 
hearts until, awed, it penetrated even to that 
hidden Light of Life in which all were one, 
while there broke upon the illumination like a 
holy challenge the crowning right for which 
the Camp Fire stands : 

“ The Right to live the Exultant Life 
That grows akin to Naturd s Throbbing 
Heart; 

The Right to dream^ and dreammg^ 

Know the Deep^ Primal Things^ 

The Soul of Beatity and the Heart of TruthP 


THE END 





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From Keel to Kite 

How Oakley Rose Became a 
Naval Architect 

By ISABEL HORNIBROOK 

lamo Cloth Illustrated $1.50 

'pHE story of an up-to-date boy who 
achieves his ambition against a headwind 
of difficulty. Son of a Gloucester “skipper” 
lost on Georges, he is brought up by his 
grandfather, and inheriting a keen love of 
vessels, desires to become a naval architect. Obliged to leave high 
school, he goes to work in an Essex shipyard, hoping to obtain a 
practical knowledge of vessels. He studies naval architecture there 
in rainy intervals when shipbuilding is impo.ssible; takes a fishing trip 
to Georges, and another, full of exciting adventure, to the halibut 
fletching grounds off the coast of Labrador. 

“Boys who delight in adventure, briskly told, will sureW find entertainment 
and profit in reading this wholesome and lively story .” — Nevj York Examiner. 

Camp and Trail 

By ISABEL HORNIBROOK 

i2mo Cloth Illustrated $1.50 

y^STORY for boys and girls who delight in 
adventure. Two English boys with their 
friend, an American collegian, go into the woods 
of Maine to hunt deer and moose. But they 
never kill wantonly or for mere sport — only for 
food or in self-defence. They study the ways 
of the great game of the woods, and breathe in 
health, inspiration and noble thoughts with the odor of the pines and 
the air of lake and mountain. 




Por sale by alt booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of 
price by the publishers 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON 


JEAN CABOT SERIES 

By GERTRUDE FISHER SCOTT 

Illustrated by Arthur O. Scott 12mo Cloth 
Price, Net, $ 1.00 each Postpaid, $1.10 


JEAN CABOT AT ASHTON 

H ere is the “real thing” in a girl’s 
college story. Older authors can invent 
situations and supply excellently written 
general delineations of character, but all 
lack the vital touch of this work of a bright 
young recent graduate of a well-known 
college for women, who has lost none of the 
enthusiasm felt as a student. Every activity 
of a popular girl’s first year is woven into a 
narrative, photographic in its description of 
a life that calls into play most attractive 
qualities, while at the same time severely 
testing both character and ability. 

JEAN CABOT IN THE BRITISH ISLES 

T his is a college story, although dealing with a summer vacation, 
and full of college spirit. It begins with a Yale-Harvard boat 
race at New London, but soon Jean and her room-mate sail for Great 
Britain under the chaperonage of Miss Hooper, a favorite member of the 
faculty at Ashton College. Their trip is full of the delight that comes 
to the traveler first seeing the countries forming “our old home,” 

JEAN CABOT IN CAP AND GOWN 

J EAN CABOT is a superb young woman, physically and mentally, 
but thoroughly human and thus favored with many warm friend- 
ships. Her final year at Ashton College is the culmination of a 
course in which study, sport and exercise, and social matters have 
been well balanced. 

JEAN CABOT AT THE HOUSE WITH 
THE BLUE SHUTTERS 

S CCH a group as Jean and her most intimate friends could not 
scatter at once, as do most college companions after graduation, 
and six of them under the chaperonage of a married older graduate 
and member of the same sorority spend a most eventful summer in a 
historic farm-house in Maine. 

For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt 
of price by the publishers 

Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Boston 



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